Today saw the publication of Health Minister Lord Darzi’s report High Quality Care for All, containing “ambitious plans" to raise the quality of healthcare for patients right across the NHS.

According to the NHS site Our NHS, Our Future, “High Quality Care For All sets a new foundation for a health service that empowers staff and gives patients choice. It ensures that health care will be personalised and fair, include the most effective treatments within a safe system, and help patients to stay healthy.”

So far, responses to the report have varied.  In response to the recommendation that hospitals are to be fined or rewarded with financial bonuses of up to 5% of a hospital’s budget based on what patients think of the quality of their care, a post by Tom Reynolds on the very enlightening blog Random Acts of Reality notes that "Giving patients choice is a fine idea in principle, but for many of the patients that I deal with they just don't have the knowledge to make an informed choice on their treatment.”

Careworld.net, a blog aiming to “highlight the inadequacies, the poor decision making, the hypocrisy and their consequences”, points out that the reports is “silent on the issue of the NHS top down highly bureaucratic structure…” noting that  “this is an important opportunity missed.”

The Jobbing Doctor, whilst acknowledging that dissection of the review over 2-3 weeks is in order, describes it as “a sagging souffle” and “a hugely disappointing review.”  In my considered opinion, whatever the responses to the review, it at least has identified that staff must be empowered to make real changes, and so effectively address ever increasing expectations from a public who are constantly being told that the NHS is to be led by them.

The challenge now is to turn Lord Darzi's vision into reality, in a notoriously slow moving and heavily bureaucratic NHS.  Practically speaking, Patient Opinion aligns well with Darzi's key recommendations, providing support to staff by demonstrating exactly what it is patients want and need, based on their experiences, suggestions and comments and providing support to patients by helping them make informed choices about their care.

As it’s been a great week for recognition (we’re finalists in the UK Catalysts awards and the New Statesman New Media awards), maybe we can forgive Lord Darzi for choosing to mention NHS Choices but forgetting to mention Patient Opinion in his plans for a high quality NHS.

Patient Opinion is a finalist in the New Stateman's new media awards, in the "community activism" category.

Which is nice. I'll let you know next week if we won anything, or just went home with the "50p off your next purchase" tokens.

Hmmm... now where's my dinner jacket? Oh yes, at the Oxfam shop. 

Last month, Patient Opinion’s own James Munro attended NESTA’s flagship conference The Innovation Edge.  NESTA supports innovation across the UK, and have generous in providing their enthusiasm, time, expertise and funding in support of Patient Opinion’s expansion to cover mental health services across England.

James was interviewed at the event, where he spoke about Patient Opinion and more specifically, the mental health pilot with the 5 Boroughs Partnership NHS Trust in Warrington. When asked about the potential difficulties which can be experienced in making changes in a monolithic bureaucracy like the NHS, James noted that sometimes improvements at ward level were easier than making wider organisational changes.  My experiences support this – the closer you get to the frontline, the more you are likely to make a difference to patient care.

The video contains some really key messages about what Patient Opinion is doing, and emphasises that improving care should start with the patients and users of the NHS

Occasionally I realise that my Spanish O level has more uses than just helping me order tapas and beer while on holiday.  It has enabled me to read an interesting post from Javier Llinares Salas on Health 2.0. (If you don’t read Spanish you can get an idea of what’s being said by copying Javier’s post into Babelfish.) Javier talks about private web 2.0 initiatives which supplement and intend to improve the public service they focus on, which enable the public to have some control over the services they receive.  One of the examples he mentions is FixMy Street.   

Patient Opinion gets a mention from Javier, as one such tool which gives power to the patient.  For Javier, sites like Patient Opinion represent a radical change for the administration of public services, helping to move towards a truly patient-led NHS.  In his words “The revolution has begun.”  

Patient Opinion is also getting some great press from it’s inclusion in the e-Health Insider report on Web 2.0 in the health Sector, where Patient Opinion is described as

 “...a standard bearer in connecting public feedback into the development of health services”.

(thanks to Explain Health for publishing that particular quote). 

Patient Opinion is working to improve patient care through patient stories  - as Internet Artizans describe us, we are “using the web to pack a social punch”.   Others have similar thoughts about the how patient experiences might help create a better healthcare system.

Richard Smith’s article in the Guardian last month describes how an online database Cases Journal is aiming to collect information from patients about their conditions, to help others with similar conditions, or combinations of conditions, find useful information to use in conversations with their own GPs. 

Smith highlights the fact that people with 3 or more conditions (heart disease, diabetes, asthma, chronic respiratory disease, arthritis, depression etc) account for 80% of healthcare activity, but, as Smith says “randomised trials that provide the best evidence tend to leave out patients who have more than one condition in order to limit the number of variables and aid interpretation.”

This is where patient experience comes in.  The idea is that you can search the Cases Journal database, find a story which is similar to your own, and then have some "evidence" for helping you and your doctor to decide what to do.

When all we rely on is targets, numbers, stats and “quantifiable” evidence, we sometimes lose sight of the information which can help us make choices about complex situations.  We can learn so much from experiences, in terms of understanding the human side of any situation, to add and compliment the scientific knowledge we already have.

Just like Patient Opinion, Cases Journal is using the real experiences of patients to improve care, and contributing to sites like these can help you make real difference to your own and others lives.