How your calls to the helpline help our work speaking up for patients

Calling or emailing our helpline not only helps the person, but it also helps us to make patient voices heard in other ways.  What we hear on the helpline feeds into every aspect of our work.  We exist to make things better for patients.   

Here’s how what we hear on the helpline enhances our work and keeps us up to date on what patients are living through.  

You said, we heard: 

"My sister's in hospital but her husband isn’t sharing any information with me, and she’s too unwell to talk to me on the phone. The hospital won’t tell me anything, what can I do?” 

We did: 

We looked at our website to ensure it was up to date and clear, stressing the importance of patients keeping personal information up to date including who you want as your next of kin.  We also held a webinar on the topic of next of kin to explain what this is and enabled patients to ask questions. We have added more information about next of kin on our website. 

You said, we heard: 

“My operation has been cancelled for the third time.”   

We did: 

We have written to the Prime Minister and the Health Secretary on several occasions about how the crisis in the NHS is affecting patients. We speak to the NHS about the impact long waits for care have on patients. Our Chief Executive Rachel Power has spoken out about delayed care on the television, radio and in many newspaper interviews.  

You said, we heard: 

“I can’t get a GP appointment.” 

We did:   

At the height of the pandemic, when getting a GP appointment was very difficult, we lobbied for digital telephony, ensuring a choice of appointment type was maintained, and for practices to have greater support including training for reception staff.  Many of these changes were introduced as part of the plan for recovering access to primary care, which we supported. To help patients understand some of the changes the plan introduced, we’ve run a series of webinars in partnership with NHS England.  We have held one on the new reception team and one on the new professionals working in general practice.  At the end of this month, we’ll be talking about Pharmacy First, the new service that expands how community pharmacists can support patients.  

You said, we heard: 

“We’d like to form a Patient Participation Group (PPG) at our surgery but don’t know where to start.” 

We did: 

We worked with NHS England, NHS Trusts, GP practices and other health and care organisations, including universities and colleges to develop a model of working that assists with patient involvement - you can use our toolkit to set up your PPG.  We even created a video version of the toolkit to make it easily accessible. We also worked with Herts and West Essex ICB, sharing the resources that it created on getting PPGs involved in research.

You said, we heard: 

“I have concerns about how my dad is being treated in his care home, how can I raise these issues with the authorities?” 

We did: 

We work closely with the Care Quality Commission (CQC) to help you navigate through the different stages of raising a complaint, including signposting to the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO).  Read how you can make a complaint about healthcare services. 

These are just a few examples of the difference your communication with us can make.  The end of your call or email is really just the beginning. 

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