Patients who use services at Ashford and St. Peter’s have given both hospitals an overall rating of 90% for their treatment and care.    

The results from the survey include:

·          90% say their care overall was good or excellent;

·          90% say doctors and nurses worked well together;

·          82% said there was always enough privacy when they were being examined or treated; and

·          80% said it took less than five minutes for their bedside call button to be answered.

The survey also shows that there has been a:

·          10% increase in the number of patients saying they were given printed information about their condition;

·          7% decrease in the number of patients who said they shared a sleeping area with the opposite sex; and

·          9% increase in the number of patients who said they got clear answers from nurses.

The 72 question survey was sent out by the Picker Institute on behalf of the Ashford and St. Peter’s Hospitals NHS Trust to a random sample of 850 in-patients aged 16 and over who used Ashford and St. Peter’s Hospitals in June, July or August 2007. Of these 435 (52.9 per cent) patients responded of which:

·          57% were female and 41% male (2% no reply);

·          10% aged under 40; 36% aged 40 to 69 and 51% aged 70 or over;

·          91% were from a white ethnic background and 3% Asian/Asian British (4% not stated);

·          27% reported having a long term physical condition;

·          13% rated their health as poor or very poor; and

·          57% were admitted as an emergency and 38% were planned admissions.

The survey can be found on the Healthcare Commission’s website at www.healthcarecommission.org.uk.

Speaking about the survey Director of Nursing and Operations Michaela Morris said: “We are looking closely at the results of this survey because it is clear that there are a number of areas where we can improve the delivery of our service.   Although our patients have told us that they have confidence in our services and the doctors, nurses and other healthcare professionals who provide them, we need to look carefully at all the results to see how we can make changes which will be appreciated by patients. The additional finances we are receiving this year, now that we are fully funded for the care we provide, should help with this task.

“We recognised last year that waiting for the yearly survey was not good enough for us to be able to respond to patient views and put right anything they had problems with.   That is why in October last year we launched our Patient Comments Cards. These are held on the Wards and enable patients to provide feedback immediately and for Ward Staff to act on those comments quickly.   This will have been too late to influence these results but we have great expectations for the 2008 inpatient survey which will take place later this year.”

In addition to the Patient Comments cards the Trust has a Patient Advice and Liaison Service (PALS), which facilitates the resolution of concerns as soon as possible. The Trust also has a formal complaints system.   During 2007/08 there were 1,098 patients, carers and relatives who made use of the Patient Advice and Liaison Service (PALS) and 437 formal complaints were responded to.   With over 450,000 patient episodes the level of complaints against the Trust is less than one per cent but every concern is looked at carefully to see where we can improve our services.

During 2007/08 the Trust was notified of 12 referrals to the Healthcare Commission for independent review, 7 cases dated back to previous years and 5 cases were from the current year 2007/08, this represents a referral rate of 1.1% in comparison with the national average of 8%.

The Trust recorded 596 compliments, gifts and donations during 2007/08.