Quarterly Report – July to September 2019
As independent champion for people who use health and social care services, we receive feedback about what is working well for people and what could be improved, and share these views with those who have the power to make change happen. We also help people find the information they need about services in their area and record this as ‘signposting’.
The report below shares a summary of the feedback collected from July to September 2019.
This quarter we received feedback and enquiries from:
• Telephone calls, emails and social media (52%)
• Postal surveys and feedback forms (5%)
• Talking to people at local engagement events (43%)
Summary for feedback received between July and September 2019.
- The average person feeding back to Healthwatch Northumberland is a woman aged between 65-79 from the Tynedale area. They are most likely to be feeding back about their own experiences.
- They are most likely to get in touch with us by the telephone, email, or social media, or through engagement events we run in their local area.
- Most people fed back to us with concerns or complaints about health services.
- Most of our feedback is about primary care services. This quarter pharmacies and GP surgeries dominated the negative feedback we got about primary care.
- Secondary care services also make up a large proportion of our feedback. This quarter feedback about a physiotherapy service dominated the negative feedback about secondary care.
- We also continued to hear back about the loss of the Hear to Help Service, which was provided by Action on Hearing Loss.
- Consistent with last quarter, most feedback was about people finding it hard to access services, rather than quality of care.
- Healthwatch Northumberland had a total of 80 recordable interactions with people. 58 of these gave us feedback, 38 were signposted and 3 exchanged information with us.
- We signposted to Independent Complaints Advocacy Northumberland, Carers Northumberland, North of Tyne Patient Advice and Liaison Service, and Northumberland County Council more than once this quarter, and at least once last quarter.
- Almost half of the organisations we signposted to this quarter were voluntary sector organisations.
