Feedback from a distance

Well, it’s quite apparent that we are in the midst of a health crisis pandemic. People have definitely shifted their focus to other matters. However, now more than ever, is when consumer feedback is so valuable.

Why?

It’s valuable because:

• It’s a way for service users, their family, friends and carers to support the development of health and care systems and training which also supports the staff that carries out the care.
• When people share their appreciation of care, it boosts morale, confidence, motivation amongst the staff to keep ongoing.
• With the many changes taking place to cater to the pandemic, we need feedback on new forms of care and changes to processes and procedures.

Due to new restrictions on human interaction and service delivery, enforced by the Australian Government, our health and social care facilities have had to introduce alternative ways of serving the community. Online feedback allows the services to know if those new ways of catering to people are effective or if they need improvements. All the care worker needs to do is invite the consumer to provide feedback on their new way of receiving care.

How can you invite a consumer to give feedback on Care Opinion quickly and easily?  

According to James Munro, Care Opinion UK’s CEO, there are three simple tools:

An invitation: simple text to explain what you want and why.

A link: how the service user can access Care Opinion’s ‘Tell Your Story’ page.

A delivery mechanism: how you get the invitation and the link to the service user.

The invitation

Here's some sample text for an invitation to give feedback via Care Opinion. You could alter this to suit your own setting.

We would love to receive any feedback you have about your experience of our service by following the link below. You can say what was good, what could have been better and how it made you feel. Care Opinion publishes the feedback to their website, keeping your name and details anonymous. We can then read your feedback and respond to you, while you remain anonymous.

We are using Care Opinion for feedback because it is safe for both yourself and our staff, allows us to respond to you directly and it is simple to use whilst maintaining social distancing requirements.

The link

When inviting the consumer to post feedback, you can give them a link to get them to Care Opinion quickly.

The simplest link is to our “Tell your story” page:  https://www.careopinion.org.au/youropinion but there are better links than this, which will help the service user get their feedback to the right service quickly and reliably. We have two different links at the moment that anyone can use.

To make a link, start by entering the name of your service in our search bar to find the service on Care Opinion which the feedback will be about.

For example, imagine that Dr Emily at the Sydney Eye Hospital wants to invite feedback about her service. She would enter Sydney/Sydney Eye Hospital into the search bar which would take her to the recommended pages within Care Opinion. She will then click on the service name. As outlined below: 

From here, she will have the option of two different links that can be provided to service users. This can also be done for hospitals, aged care facilities or social and community care services.

Option 1 - "Tell your story" link via the service page

On the right-hand side of the service page, there is a blue button captioned "Tell your story - make a difference". 

If Dr Emily were to click on this button, she would arrive at this page: https://www.careopinion.org.au/youropinion?nacs=HOS_SSEH_2000

Copy the page address (in the browser address bar) to provide this link to the service user. They will be able to tell a story using our standard workflow. As the service user is using the specific link for the service, our system will prompt them to select the Sydney Eye Hospital (or your service) at the right time in the story-telling process. The service user will be able to link their story to additional services also if they want. (For example, the feedback might be about another secondary care service).

Option 2 - Kiosk mode

A second option is to provide a link to the "kiosk mode" for the service. Again, find your service using the search bar which leads you to the service page. From that page, look at the right-hand side of the page and scroll down under the 'How people have rated this service' panel box. You'll see a text link to "Kiosk mode".

If Dr Emily were to click on this text link, she would arrive at the kiosk mode page for her hospital: https://www.careopinion.org.au/kiosk/hos_sseh_2000

If you provide this link (the page address in the browser address bar) to the service user, they will be able to share feedback using our kiosk mode workflow. This is a much shorter and quicker method for service users to tell their story. 

It's good to be aware that in the kiosk mode, however, the feedback can relate only to the one service set in the link, although this does no often cause issues for services.

Learn more about kiosk mode

The delivery mechanism

So now you have an invitation and a link. All you need to do is get this to the consumer. How can you do this?

It depends on your situation and what's available to you. Here are a few ideas:

Online consultations

Can you add the invitation and link to your online system in some way - for example, the start screen, or the post-consultation screen, or an email sent by the system before or after the consultation?

Phone consultations

If you have email addresses, perhaps the invitation and link could be emailed to patients who've had a phone consultation in the past week? Or if you have the consumer’s mobile number, you could text them the invitation and link.

Existing online survey

If you run an online survey already, you might add the invitation and link at the end. Some people who complete the survey will have things (not covered in the survey) they want to tell you. Care Opinion provides a simple way to do that.

                                           

As you can see there are many ways of interacting with your consumers in this time and once you start engaging in feedback through Care Opinion, you will learn even more benefits this form of feedback has on your health and care systems and the level of care your service users receive.

I hope this will be useful in your own organisation. Some may have different ways of working this into their current procedures, so if there are any questions or need some help, be sure to get in contact with us and we can assist you.

Good luck and take care.