NHS Punters Speak Out - Episode 2

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. In this programme Liz speaks to the critics of this new trend who suggest that 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. The architects of online feedback are invited to respond. Interviewees include the Champion of the Digital Inclusion Task Force, Martha Lane Fox.