Good to have some evidence about what we’ve long suspected – that patients know what they’re talking about when it comes to the quality of hospital services. Researchers at Imperial College have shown that hospitals that  rated highly by patients on public feedback sites are indeed better that those that are rated badly by them.

Not surprising but very worthwhile to have the academic evidence. Thanks to everyone at Imperial who did the hard work.

It is two weeks after we switched the site over and things are settling in nicely at Patient Opinion.

To mark the release of the upgraded site we created a report that evaluated the issues that concern patients/service users on Patient Opinion the most.

The report looked at a sample of over 500 postings rated critical by Patient Opinion (n.b 79% of all postings on Patient Opinion includes at least one positive aspect of their experience). Read and download In their words: What patients think about our NHS

The aim of the report was to uncover the top issues raised by patients on the site. We wanted to quantify patient stories that have so far gone unheard or have been dismissed as too anecdotal. We think that data is no substitute for patient voice and we do mot want to oversimplify the postings on Patient Opinion but we hope this report would go some way to bridge the gap between data and stories.

In their words: What patients think about our NHS is the first report of it’s kind Patient Opinion has undertaken and was covered in a number of placing including the Guardian and the nursing times.

The Daily Mail picked up on the more negative aspects of the report and this article was responded to on the Primly Stable blog with a post titled "Only telling half of the story".

Finally, if you want more information on our methodology you can find this here

Next week I'm off to talk to commissioners of maternity services about online feedback from users of the services they commission.

Maternity care is one of those parts of health care where "clinical outcomes" are vital but usually OK, and "experiential outcomes" sometimes forgotten. I've blogged before on what women have said on Patient Opinion about their care.

So I thought it might be interesting to construct a quick Wordle of the 1,000 odd comments on maternity care that we can find on both Patient Opinion and NHS Choices. And here it is.

Yesterday the London Evening Standard ran a story on the "nightmare" of maternity care in London, prompted by stories women have shared on Patient Opinion about their bad experiences of giving birth.

For example, Maree calls her experience of childbirth "terrifying, confusing and demeaning". Anonymous 2 found "the showers were flithy and paint was peeling off the wall" where she gave birth. Anon reported "cockroaches in the communal eating area". And today on Patient Opinion, Sam told how she feels that her experience has left her not with post-natal depression, but with post traumatic stress disorder.

To be sure, we hear plenty of stories of extraordinary care too. Often, these too will move us to tears.

But that's not the point. The point is that plenty of women are saying, very clearly and courageously, that their experience simply wasn't good enough - and, in some cases, was actually harmful.

The point is: 15 years after the Changing Childbirth report, surely we can do better than this?