|
The Healthcare Commission conducted the
National survey of adult inpatients in the autumn of 2006.
- Brown must trust the people on the NHS. Gordon Brown could learn a
lot about how to improve Labour's dreadful poll ratings on its stewardship of
the NHS by studying a publication today from the Healthcare Commission. Every
year, the health inspectorate organises a huge survey of 80,000 people with
recent experience as inpatients. At one level, the result this time is a
massive vote of confidence in the service. Only 2% of patients with direct
knowledge of conditions in acute and specialist hospitals throughout England
said the overall standard of care was poor. Nine out of 10 said it was
excellent, very good or good. I wonder what private sector industry could
match these satisfaction ratings - or have the courage to publish the evidence
of where the service fell short? Compare now the patients' views about what
the NHS is really like with opinion polls showing what the public thinks about
the government's handling of the service. While the inspectorate was
questioning patients last autumn, an ICM poll for the Guardian found only 25%
of voters thought the NHS had improved since Labour came to power in 1997,
compared with 30% who said it had got worse and 39% who said Labour had made
little difference. In spite of all the extra billions that Brown, as
chancellor, poured into health, Labour has been trailing behind the
Conservatives on territory that it used to dominate. Brown's advisers must ask
why the NHS's reputation is so bad when its service is regarded by users as so
good. Perhaps the most plausible reason is the persistent bad-mouthing of the
NHS by its staff and by the media. A service with 1.3 million employees,
including many of the most trusted professionals in the land, ought to have
1.3 million goodwill ambassadors. Instead they are, for the most part,
disgruntled and fearful that their service is on a slippery slope towards
privatisation. In spite of substantial pay rises over recent years and
recruitment of extra staff that should have reduced work pressures, the mood
of optimism that greeted the NHS plan in 2000 has dissipated. John Carvel
Wednesday May 16, 2007 The Guardian
- Hospitals let down by the basics in patient survey. Scores of NHS
hospitals across England are failing to protect patients' dignity and to meet
basic standards of cleanliness and care, the government's health watchdog
warned today in its annual check of conditions on the wards. The Healthcare
Commission found 30% of inpatients have to share bathrooms or shower areas
with the opposite sex, in spite of government guidance that the practice is
upsetting, particularly to women. It identified a handful of trusts where most
patients have to wash in mixed-sex facilities, which rarely exist in public
buildings outside the health service and which ministers claimed to have
eradicated. At St Mary's teaching hospital in central
London, 59% of patients shared mixed-sex bathrooms. The commission's huge
survey of 80,000 inpatients' experiences also found that 20% of people who
could not eat without assistance said they did get enough help. This rose to
42% at Queen Mary's hospital in Sidcup. The report found 30 trusts where at
least 20% of patients said the quality of meals was poor, rising to 32% at
Queen Mary's Sidcup and at North Middlesex hospital in Edmonton, north London.
Across England, 15% of inpatients said it took staff more than five minutes to
respond to an emergency call button, rising to 39% at Queen Mary's Sidcup.
John Carvel, social affairs editor
Wednesday May 16, 2007 SocietyGuardian.co.uk
- NHS patients
rate care highly. Only 2% of patients rate their overall care as "poor"
and nine out of ten declare it "good", "very good" or "excellent", according
to the Healthcare Commission's annual survey. However, the survey of 80,000
patients also found that a fifth of patients say they got too little
information about their treatment or condition and 22% said they were not
"always" treated with respect, the figure as high as 40% in some hospitals and
as low as 10 in others.
Summary by
Keep our NHS Public of Financial
Times 16 May 2007
|