Patient experience as important as clinical outcomes in NHS Next Stage Review

NHS staff should ensure that the three key elements of the review – patient experience, clinical effectiveness and patient safety – are given equal status in improving services, said Richard Gleave, director of patient experience at the DH.

‘There is often a tendency to focus on clinical effectiveness and safety because these are the areas people feel more comfortable talking about,’ he said at a patient experience conference at Homerton University Hospital in London.

‘But patient experience is a crucial and critical dimension of quality and we need to make sure that all three parts are equally robust,’ he said.

DH guidance on improving patient experience is due to be issued in April. Last week, it published guidance for collecting patient feedback on the success of NHS operations, via Patient Reported Outcome Measures (PROMs).

PROMs are to be introduced for all hip replacements, knee replacements, groin hernia and varicose vein operations from April.

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