NHS Punters Speak Out - Episode 1

With the help of dissatisfied NHS patients, Liz Barclay asks if the growing popularity of online feedback can really make a difference to standards of health care and treatment. The culture of customers offering brickbats and bouquets to service providers has now extended beyond hotels and coffee chains to the NHS. Hospital rating websites invite patients to grade their hospital stay out of five stars, and to leave comments about the care they received. Liz invites NHS patients who have used one of these patient rating websites to discuss their experiences and puts their points to the hospitals where they were treated. She asks if the idea of online feedback can be really be applied to our health service and if it can genuinely improve standards of care. Critics suggest the sites are merely window-dressing and that NHS patients are not 'consumers'. Some health professionals claim that the sites can easily just become places where personal scores are settled against NHS staff.