Evaluating services through feedback

This is the last post in the series of Mevolution- making an informed decision about your health care. I will be talking about how a feedback about the services provided helps in taking the final step towards an informed decision and a better health care system as a whole. The individual patient is personally experiencing the healthcare, thus, making him or her essential source for information across services and care settings. Everyone using health and care services should have the provision to provide feedback. Services should also contribute by working to gather feedback from patients to evaluate and understand their performance. Genuine surveys must be conducted to get a more service specific feedback. Feedbacks can be in the form of multiple choice questions or a grading scale. In these methods the core domains of patient experience can be covered. Being a short and less time consuming survey, it is preferable for the organization and the patient alike. The data can then be fed into the system and the results can easily be extrapolated. Another form of feedback is by description. Although time consuming, it can be more desirable. Patient stories provide a descriptive narrative of an individual’s treatment or care and their journey as a patient through a care pathway or organization. This can then be used by the organization to evaluate their services. Experience-based co-design (EBCD) is an approach where individual patients share the story of their experience of care. The patients and staff together, then identify areas for improvement, and form co-design groups. These groups, then work to implement changes to services. Patients and staff monitor and oversee changes and improvements as they happen throughout this time. Thus, like all other steps of informed decision making, feedback is also a mutual process. It is as important to give a genuine feedback as it is to assess it. *Reference: People in control of their own health and care

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