Emergency patients to receive phone call about their service

It’s part of a national initiative asking people about their experiences and whether they would recommend their local hospital.

The Friends and Family Test is already available for patients to complete via a postcard which they are given as they leave the department, and is available online. Now an automated phone call is also being used to gather more responses.

The automated voice will ask patients to rate the service they received by answering just one question: how likely they are to recommend the department to friends and family if they need similar treatment. They are asked to answer on a scale of one to six using their keypad: one being ‘extremely likely’ to recommend the department, five being ‘extremely unlikely’ and six being ‘don’t know’.

In the most recent figures published (for September) 94 per cent of patients at the Trust said they would recommend A&E to their friends and family.

· 96 per cent of patients responding to the survey about Grimsby hospital’s A&E said they would recommend the department, only one per cent said they would not (three per cent said ‘don’t know’).

· 91 per cent of those responding about Scunthorpe hospital said they would recommend the department, only three per cent would not (six per cent said ‘don’t know’).

Joanna Loughborough, patient experience practitioner at the Trust, said: “Patient feedback is so important to us. We need to know if there are any areas where we need to make improvements and patients are best placed to give us this feedback. We also want to hear about where we have provided a good service so we can give praise where it is due.

“We’ve implemented this telephone survey to try to reach more patients and we’re also exploring other technologies to help us offer patients a variety of ways to respond to the survey.”