Sir Robert Francis QC, Chair of Healthwatch England has today laid the Healthwatch annual report to parliament, setting out to MPs and the Government the key issues people are feeding back about their experiences of health and care services in England.
“As the NHS focusses on reforming other areas of care, it needs to keep on talking to communities so that everyone gets the good quality care they need.”
— Sir Robert Francis QC
Last year, Healthwatch supported over 336,000 people to share their story about health and social care. These views resulted in over 7,200 recommendations to services about the improvements that people would like to see.
Click Here to read their new report – Guided by you – to see how your voice makes a difference.
This year’s report is supported by an additional summary of what 40,000 people told us about how they would like the changes proposed in the NHS Long Term Plan to be implemented where they live.
Between March and June 2019, the Healthwatch network carried out 500 focus groups, attended 1,000 events and engaged tens of thousands of people online to find out what people want from the next ten years of the NHS.61% of cancer respondents provided a positive response versus 23% of respondents with dementia.
People affected by cancer, and heart and lung conditions said that they had a much better experience of care services than people with other conditions. For example, when asked ‘How would you describe your overall experience of getting help?’, 61% of cancer respondents provided a positive response versus 23% of respondents with dementia.
The positive feedback about cancer and heart and lung services appeared to be for a variety of reasons, including speed of diagnosis and treatment, access to rehabilitation, and quality of information and communication from professionals.
People affected by other issues, especially mental ill health, dementia or learning disabilities, told Healthwatch that this kind of support often wasn’t in place for them and that professionals did not give enough consideration to their full range of needs.
Published: 29th January 2020
Source: Healthwatch
Report URL: https://www.healthwatch.co.uk/report/2020-01-29/our-annual-report-201819