Patient Opinion has been plugging away at
innovating in healthcare, using the web, and the power of web2.0. We started
with hospitals, and have expanded to cover most of the health service – with
our mental health service work spreading across England as we speak! And the
Patient Opinion steam engine doesn’t stop there..
For a while, people have been asking us
when we are going to cover social care services. Choice and financial
considerations are become ever more of an issue in social care, with the
continued roll out of individual budgets
and personalisation.
And with these changes, the need for real time service user feedback in social
care is clearly growing.
Well, we are taking our first baby steps
into this world, with a pilot project to explore how to extend our platform to
residential nursing homes and care homes. Publishing online feedback about residential
care homes is not straightforward. Residents are vulnerable, and often not able
to speak for themselves. Telling a story about a hospital is fine, as you leave
and probably won’t go back again for a while, but residents do not often leave
care homes. This might mean we need to change how we think about creating an
online tool for care homes.
According to the Department of Health,
one in four of us will live in a care home at some point in our lives. That
means these homes are part of our lives and our future. But try to find any
feedback, or service user commentary on individual care homes online.
Seriously, go and Google now, and I’ll buy you a pint if you find one story!
This is a much needed service, for a sadly under discussed sector. And we think
that Patient Opinion should have a try.
As always with Patient Opinion, we want to
use the tools of the web to make it easy and immediate for service users and
service providers to work together to make services better. But how best to do
this in care homes? The answer might take us away from simple service user
stories, and into a whole new online world… So stay tuned for our ideas on what
new careworld might look like. In the meantime, if you have thoughts or
inspirations about this – we would love to hear them!