Why not patient feedback on psychiatric services?

We read with interest the article by Hansen et al, ¹ which brings the important issue of patient satisfaction back on the agenda. We would, however, encourage our colleagues to go further and collect patient satisfaction data for psychiatric services routinely. This is especially important considering the current time of austerity and the fact that, when compared with other high-income countries, the UK scores badly on patient-centred care. ²

Most trusts in the current market-driven National Health Service are using Health of the Nation Outcome Scales (HoNOS) as an outcome measure to assess the quality of service provided. Although we do not dispute the importance of getting validated data on improved patient outcome, this is a clinician-rated tool and as such it has the inherent issues of bias.

Most large organisations get feedback from customers, and the success of companies such as TripAdvisor and Amazon is based on the fact that customers regularly give feedback on their websites. Should we not be doing the same regarding the service we are providing? How else would we know what the patients expect from our service?

When considering service provision in times of fiscal austerity, we need to consider all our stakeholders, of which patients are the most important. When justifying our services to commissioners, we should also include the views of patients. We would go even further and suggest that patients could also inform us of how services could be cut in these difficult financial times.