Can patients assess the quality of health care?

doi:10.1136/bmj.333.7557.1

BMJ 2006;333:1-2 (1 July), doi:10.1136/bmj.333.7557.1

Editorial

Can patients assess the quality of health care?

Patients' surveys should ask about real experiences of medicalcare

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Patient feedback surveys are increasingly seen as a key componentof monitoring and improving the quality of health care.¹ Since2002, all NHS trusts in England have been required to surveya sample of their patients on an annual basis and report theresults to their regulator, the Healthcare Commission. Generalpractitioners throughout the United Kingdom can earn extra contractualpoints and more money if they implement patient surveys. Patients'feedback on individual doctors has been advocated for practiceaccreditation, clinical governance, assessment of trainees,appraisal, and revalidation. But can patients' really make reliablejudgments on the quality of health care?

In this week's BMJ Rao and colleagues point to some potentialproblems, particularly with regard to patients' assessment ofthe technical quality of care.² Using a British adaptation ofa US patient questionnaire (the general practice assessmentsurvey (GPAS)³), they found no correlation between patients'evaluations of . . . [Full text of this article]

Angela Coulter, chief executive

Picker Institute Europe, King's Mead House, Oxford OX1 1RX
(angela.coulter@pickereurope.ac.uk)

CiteULike

Complore

Connotea

Del.icio.us Add to Digg

Digg

StumbleUpon Add to Technorati

Technorati What's this?

Relevant Articles

Patient involvement in health care will improve quality: Robert Hunter and Rosie Cameron
BMJ 2006 333: 147-148. [Extract] [Full Text]

Patients' own assessments of quality of primary care compared with objective records based measures of technical quality of care: cross sectional study: Mala Rao, Aileen Clarke, Colin Sanderson, and Richard Hammersley
BMJ 2006 333: 19. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

What do patients and the public want from primary care?: Angela Coulter
BMJ 2005 331: 1199-1201. [Extract] [Full Text] [PDF]

The increasing importance of patient surveys: Paul D Cleary
BMJ 1999 319: 720-721. [Extract] [Full Text] [PDF]

This article has been cited by other articles:

Campbell, J L, Dickens, A, Richards, S H, Pound, P, Greco, M, Bower, P (2007). Capturing users' experience of UK out-of-hours primary medical care: piloting and psychometric properties of the Out-of-hours Patient Questionnaire. Qual Saf Health Care 16: 462-468 [Abstract] [Full text]
Baron, J. A. (2007). Can Aspirin Keep Mortality at Bay?. Arch Intern Med 167: 535-536 [Full text]
Hunter, R., Cameron, R. (2006). Patient involvement in health care will improve quality.. BMJ 333: 147-148 [Full text]

Rapid Responses:

Read all Rapid Responses

Yes They Can And They Should: Dr. Herbert H. Nehrlich
bmj.com, 3 Jul 2006 [Full text]
Patient assessment of quality of care: George E. Pickett, et al.
bmj.com, 4 Jul 2006 [Full text]
Assessors for quality of healthcare: MK V Sathyamoorthy
bmj.com, 4 Jul 2006 [Full text]
Patients' role in workplace-based assessment of healthcare: Douglas J Murphy, et al.
bmj.com, 5 Jul 2006 [Full text]
Patient involvement in health care will improve quality.: Robert Hunter, et al.
bmj.com, 7 Jul 2006 [Full text]
Letter to the Editor: Rebecca C. Jonnerhag
bmj.com, 2 Sep 2006 [Full text]