NHS Friends and Family Test Extends To Cover GP and Community Health Services

East Riding residents are being invited to take part in a new NHS Friends and Family Test (FFT) pilot to assess whether they would recommend community and GP services to their family and friends.

NHS East Riding of Yorkshire Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) successfully bid to be a host area for the FFT pilot in partnership with Humber NHS Foundation Trust and East Riding of Yorkshire Council for the following services:

• Mild Cognitive Impairment clinics (or memory clinics)
• Falls Prevention service
• GP services
• Long Term Conditions service

The FFT was introduced in hospitals in 2013 to obtain real-time feedback from patients about the services they use Patients in the East Riding will be provided with comment card to rate in confidence how likely they would recommend the service to their friends and family. If they wish they can also provide further information on their experience.

The CCG has started to collect data and will do so for an initial three month period.

Feedback to patients and the public is of paramount importance and a variety of methods will be used to communicate the results of the Friends and Family Test. These include ‘You Said…We Did’ posters, social media and via the CCG website.

Alex Seale, Director of Commissioning and Transformation at ERY CCG said:

“The Friends and Family Test will help us the capture the quality of patient experience in these services, so that changes and improvements can be made in a timely manner. The FFT will also identify where clinicians in GP practices and the community have given an excellent standard of care.”