At NHS Tameside and Glossop our aim is to become a local people’s service that shares information about the services that we provide and invites people to be involved in a meaningful way.
A Public and Patient Involvement Strategy has been developed over the last few months and from this strategy will arise a plan that will strive to develop a PCT that is open and responsive to the needs of the public and patients, carers, healthcare professionals, to local people and to the organisations that we work with.
To help us improve and promote involvement for our patients and public, NHS Tameside and Glossop will build on its current activities of engagement and will adopt a new proactive style of involvement with patients/public, which will involve a shift in culture for all service providers and commissioners as well as our local communities.
Our plan, which was presented to the Board in December 2007, strives to embed patient and public involvement into all areas of the PCT and proposed the following:
- That we build on and enhance all our current Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) activities.
- Patient and Public involvement right at the beginning of any new service proposal or service re-design with written evidence that this has been done prior to Board approval.
- To develop in-house expertise through training and communications about the importance of PPI and how everyone can include it in their core business.
- To establish a feedback mechanism with PPI, Patient Experience, PALS and complaints so that all patient/public information is fed into a central point using that information as a catalyst for service improvement.
- Effective partnership working with local authorities, GP’s and voluntary organisations.
- To ensure what the PCT hears it acts upon; what it says it will do, it does:
1. Through LiNKs and other formalised public engagement.
2. Through formal/informal patient feedback mechanisms
3. Through our patients, clinicians (eg our practices and public and through our website)
4. Through the use of plain English in all our communications.
- To identify target groups within Tameside and Glossop that are notoriously hard to reach to develop a deeper understanding of their needs and to hear act upon the experiences of this population.