A project to improve collection of patient feedback during distanced consultations in a primary care network.

Background: The NHS Friends and Family Test (FFT) is the largest single source of patient feedback in the world, having collected over 75 million pieces of feedback since its introduction in 2013. It is traditionally collected using paper forms after a service encounter. COVID-19 caused enormous disruption and change to primary care services across the world, and also reduced the ability of patients to give feedback about their significantly altered services. This project looked at the introduction of virtual delivery of the FFT to patients in a primary care network.

Approach: Feedback received by a primary care network from December 2019 to August 2020 was audited and compared to feedback received after the introduction of virtual FFT delivery via AccuRx software. Qualitative feedback from practice staff was collected regarding the implementation of the FFT.

Results: 61 pieces of feedback were collected per month on average prior to the introduction of virtual FFT collection across the network. Trial introduction of virtual FFT introduction in 3 practices which serve 54% of the network’s patients also returned 61 pieces per month. Issues identified included patient accessibility, potential introduction of bias in feedback collection and unequal provision of FFT between centres within the network.

Implications: Virtual FFT collection offers and effective way for practices to improve their collection of FFT data, of particular relevance when performing distanced consultations. Virtual FFT collection will now be introduced across this network. Further development areas include improving language accessibility, and automation to reduce administrative burden of data collection and reduce bias.