Frequently asked questions

In summary, the services that iWantGreatCare provides, primarily, to NHS Trusts and private sector organisations are in the field of qualitative and quantitative patient feedback:

1. Data collection, monitoring and analysis
2. Real-time alerting and automated report generation
3. Staff and patient engagement programmes

See the iWantGreatCare solutions page for further detail on these services.

Alternatively, contact the team by phone or email and an experienced advisor will be happy to talk you through the services available:

Tel: +44 (0)1865 522190
Email: clients@iwantgreatcare.org

We are very happy to let our clients speak for themselves about the iWantGreatCare service:

“We had tried many methods to capture patient experience, but none had given the real-time detail and volume of feedback necessary to drive improved performance.

iWantGreatCare has not only been the simplest system to implement, but has given the Trust truly valuable insight and a new level of comparative data that will make a real difference in supporting clinical staff to deliver an excellent experience to all patients.

The responsiveness of the iWantGreatCare team is particularly valuable in ensuring that we always have up to date information and bespoke reports needed at board level.”

KATHRYN HALFORD, DIRECTOR OF PATIENT EXPERIENCE

Walsall NHS Trust

“As an NHS paediatrician working in a busy district hospital iWantGreatCare has become a valued tool to support and improve my focus on the experience of my patients and their families.

Despite the initial concerns of some colleagues, iWantGreatCare has been increasingly adopted across our department and has become one of the easiest and most effective ways I have found to establish a culture that positions patient experience as a fundamental measure of the quality of the service we provide”.

Nadeem Moghal, FRCPCH Fellow in clinical leadership & Consultant paediatric nephrologist

Newcastle NHS Trust

“Using iWantGreatCare has proved to be a rapid way to get powerful new insights into the needs and experience of our patients.

Implementing the system has been straight-forward, and I have been surprised and delighted by the high volume of detailed responses we get every day. Sharing this unique feedback with staff and customers has real potential to improve our service and support our marketing.

The iWantGreatCare team particularly understands the specific needs of a healthcare provider and the need to robustly monitor and respond to patient comments.”

STEVE HOWARD, SUPERINTENDENT PHARMACIST

Lloyds Pharmacy

“We should remember that healthcare professionals are proud. They want to deliver a good service. If you embed direct patient feedback into the system, as we have in Wales for palliative care using iWantGreatCare, it can become a powerful driver to quality improvement”

PROFESSOR ILORA FINLAY

All Wales Palliative Care Board

“More and more patients and families have used iWantGreatCare to read reviews from other patients before seeing me. In many cases, these reviews are the reason they asked their GP to refer their children to me.

At the same time, there is increasing interest and engagement from families who want to add their review to help the next patient make an informed choice.”

Professor Rashid Gatrad OBE, Professor of Paediatrics

Walsall NHS Trust

The whole area of direct patient feedback is new and for some doctors this is very challenging. However, all good doctors want to know what their patients think about them so they can improve and continue to build trust and confidence.

Doctors are key to the success of patient feedback programmes and there has been a noticeable increase in their appreciation of how patient feedback can benefit their practice.

IWGC speaks regularly at events for healthcare professionals and the overwhelming reaction from hospital doctors and GPs alike is positive. The concept of patient feedback is accepted as being here to stay and one of the most common questions now asked at these events is ‘How do I get started?’

Increasingly, doctors are promoting their own iWantGreatCare web page and asking their patients to review them directly. These doctors invariably become the most enthusiastic advocates of the service as they see for themselves, first-hand, the value of patient feedback.

iWantGreatCare has developed a complex, multi-layered technology to prevent abuse of the system. This combines human, automated and statistical monitoring at each step of the process and is one of the most advanced security solutions for internet reviews of healthcare.

The technology has been proven to protect from malicious use of iWantGreatCare, and is continually being improved and advanced.

Longstanding concerns about the variability in performance of GPs “have reached new heights” according to the Guardian. They cite the evidence that nearly half of all complaints about doctors to the GMC concern GPs (who only make up a third of UK doctors), and that negligence claims against GPs are soaring.

These concerns, combined with the Government’s drive for choice and transparency are driving initiatives to give the public much better information on which to choose their family doctor. A range of data will soon be available to help people ensure they are choosing the best doctor for themselves and their family and to help doctors themselves know just how well they are performing compared to their peers.

A patient adding an opinion to iWantGreatCare is a direct and effective way to help other patients and carers. As more reviews are added, patients looking for the best doctor, nursing home or medicine can read the shared experience of thousands of others to help them find the care best suited to their needs.

Adding an anonymous opinion to iWantGreatCare is also an effective way to give constructive feedback and thanks to a doctor. This makes the doctor aware of the patient’s experience and helps improve the care they give.

Being transparent and open about patients’ feedback will help doctors build trusted relationship with their patients. Such relationships are known to deliver better health outcomes.

The team managing iWantGreatCare passionately believes that empowering patients to share their experience, knowledge and opinions drives change and improvements in the health service to benefit all.

The idea for iWantGreatCare came from Dr Neil Bacon an Oxford specialist and Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, who has combined an Oxford and Harvard medical career with a decade’s experience of developing innovative Internet services for better healthcare.

However the real power behind iWantGreatCare is the patients, carers and all those passionate about delivering great healthcare. iWantGreatCare helps to harness, focus and maximise the impact of the most honest, immediate and direct insight into quality care – the patient voice.