Search these help files

Purpose

In its drive to continuously improve services the NHS stipulates that NHS practices must provide all patients with:

• a means to record feedback on their experiences,
• access to collated information from other patient feedback.

In other words, to better inform their own future choices and decisions, patients have a right to see how other patients feel about particular services.

This policy drives service excellence in the industry:

• patients increasingly support those who provide the best service,
• practitioners become increasingly responsive to patient feedback,
• the NHS formulates national best practice guidelines based on what works best for patients.

The NHS regulation introduced in April 2015 requires NHS dental practices to survey their patients with the Friends and Family Test questions.

NHS practices have identified tablets as the most desirable method for collecting data, so this test is ideally suited to the Clinipad.

Non-NHS practices

Non-NHS practices can opt to use the test functionality without submission to the NHS, and they can configure custom questions to monitor patient perceptions of their service.

Benefits

Benefits to the practice:

• Conventional test media may skew results:

  Test completion via pick-up forms and forms mailed to patients is left to patient whim, so it is likely that the most proactive responders will be the dissatisfied patients, which skews the responses towards the negative.

  Practices can drive more balanced test responses by means of a standard Clinipad procedure while the patients are present and compliant within the practice.

• Rigorously applying the Friends and Family Test requirement via Clinipad is a consistent, automated means for practices to 'buffer compliance' with NHS regulations so that they have some leeway if they are found to be non-compliant in other areas.
• By driving test use within the practice, sites increase the test hit rate and raise their average scores above those sites whose patients respond only from home when they feel strongly enough to make a negative statement.

Benefits to the patient:

• Patients prefer tablets for recording test information.
• For patient interest a practice can report test data (on websites, newsletters or other media) by provider, thereby identifying providers with the most positive feedback.

Benefits to the industry:

• The Friends and Family Test feedback loop drives service excellence in the dental industry.

Features

NHS Compliance:

The Friends and Family Test is always turned on for participating EXACT NHS practices (it cannot be disabled).

In accordance with NHS requirements, patients must always have the option of completing the test.

Note that practices do have the option of disabling the Friends and Family Test prompt in the Exit Workflow.

Patient can be assured of anonymity:

Described in: Patient anonymity in the Friends and Family Test

A record is sent to the Contacts Tab on the Patient File:

From v11.6, when surveys are sent to patients, EXACT adds a record in the Contacts Tab. This includes the date that the survey was sent, the survey icon, description as NHS Friends and Family Test, and the creator as 'System'.

The test is built into the practice workflow:

Receptionists are prompted to administer the Friends and Family Test via a hyperlink in the exit workflow / departure task list:

Test reporting:

• Friends and Family Test completion is reported in EXACT's Appointment Workflow Compliance Report, which identifies to what degree receptionists have complied with appointment workflow tasks.
• A Friends and Family Test Report summarises data from the tests without identifying patients.

Alternatives to the Clinipad Friends and Family Test:

These are alternatives to patients completing the test on Clinipad:

Using PatientComms for NHS Friends and Family Test

Requirements

Requirements:

• EXACT v11.5 or later.
• English NHS-compliant practice.
• Functional Clinipad module.
• NHS practices require the capability to transfer test data to the NHS via the NHS portal.
• NHS Practices may implement the Friends and Family Test at any time within their practices, but are required to start submitting data after April 2015.
• Practices are required to meet further obligations with regards to the test that are not covered by the EXACT software, such as displaying evidence of actions taken as a direct result of patient feedback. These requirements are not covered in EXACT documentation.

Limitations:

Functional in England only.

EXACT does not automatically communicate test results to the NHS; these results must be manually uploaded to the NHS portal by the practice.