Your feedback November 2025
Your NHS and social care feedback November 2025
Top issues
This month we heard mixed feedback about GP and hospital services. We heard negative feedback about hospital IT systems not being joined up with other parts of the NHS and that post-operation advice was not always provided to patients. However, several people did mention good quality service from both GPs and hospitals.
This month’s focus
Our Here to Hear drop-in sessions took place in East Bedlington, Hexham, Morpeth, Prudhoe and Ashington. We also attended Wooler Warm Hub, Hexham Livestock Mart, Ageing Well’s Winter Warmer event in Ponteland, Carers Northumberland’s Carers Rights information day in Morpeth and the ‘Digital health in rural communities: bridge or barrier?’ conference, organised by the National Innovation Centre for Rural Enterprise.
This month’s free online information session from the ME Association was an update on the latest research on ME and Long Covid. A recording of the talk can be found on our Online Events webpage.
Working with local Healthwatch and the NHS in our area, we asked for feedback on three services designed to help people access the care they need more quickly. These are GP out of hours appointments, the NHS App, and the Pharmacy First Service. You can leave feedback about these services online.
Positive feedback example
A person told us they have attended a hospital on many occasions for cancer care, and found all the staff they came into contact with to be friendly and very attentive. They particularly liked that the staff remember their name and use it throughout their interactions, making the person feel more at ease and like a person not a number.
Tynedale resident
Negative feedback example
“The Newcastle Hospitals and Northumbria Trusts operate totally different IT systems and appointment systems and don’t cross over. Arranging appointments between them as new patients to the English NHS was farcical and tortuous and not helped by the Scottish hospital records not being sent over into the England systems – which apparently is ‘normal’. Why? This is an everyday occurrence and surely can be
facilitated much more professionally, bearing in mind the huge and potentially serious range of health issues that are needing to be monitored/managed?”
North Northumberland resident
Impact
“Healthwatch Northumberland does a great job in terms of collating all of the patient feedback, distilling it, and presenting the key themes of that back to us. This evidence base can give us more to go on from a commissioning/contract perspective.“
Comment received from the Strategic Head of Primary Care (Northumberland and North Tyneside Delivery Team) at NHS North East and North Cumbria Integrated Care Board.
Information and Signposting Service
We were able to help people find the information they need on a range of issues and services, including sight loss support, elderly support groups, respite day care and drop-in hearing aid clinics.
