Have Your Say

1. Receptionists
2. Cleanliness
3. Check-in
4. Waiting

Over 500,000 patients attend King's outpatients each year. Coming to King's as an outpatient is often the first experience that someone has of the hospital so it's important that we get it right.

We know that there are areas that we can improve on, so last year we introduced a new 'How are we doing' outpatient survey. The idea was to gather feedback from patients about their experience at King's and use it to make changes for the better.

We asked two of our large outpatient areas, Suites 3 and 7, to work to improve on five key areas where patients have told us that we need to get better:

• If you had to wait for your appointment, were you told how long you would have to wait?
• How clean was the Outpatient Department you visited (including any toilets you may have used in the Outpatient Department)?
• Did a member of staff explain the results of your test(s) in a way you could understand?
• Were you involved as much as you wanted in decisions about your care and treatment?
• Overall, how would you rate the care you received in the outpatient department?
  

Here are some of the actions that we undertook in response to feedback:

• Communication Boards in every area to relay messages on waiting times
• Monthly Cleaning Audits with follow up on actions and results published on the Infection Control notice boards
• More frequent checks on cleanliness
• Conducting observations in clinics looking at everything from how staff communicate with patient to cleanliness and the overall atmosphere of the clinic - and then using the findings to inform service improvement work
  

These actions have had a positive impact with scores for these five questions improving by 11%.

Overall, across the Trust, satisfaction rates have also improved by 10% from 74% in September 2012 to 82% in March 2013.

We know that we can still do better. Amongst other work over the coming year, we are are planning to focus on improving the experience of patients attending Suite 1, one of our busiest outpatient departments which looks after our orthopaedic patients.

Please do continue to give us your views. It's only by hearing your real concerns that we know what to do to make a difference for you - our patients.