Patients asked to rate hospitals

According to The Times, patients will be able to fill in a questionnaire to give ratings to their experience of surgery at NHS hospitals.

As part of a new programme, a quarter of a million patients in England will be given questionnaires in order to rate their surgery and recovery in hospital.

The "patient-reported outcome measures" (PROMs), will be introduced in April this year. The results will give a score to hospitals and clinics which offer NHS surgery.

Health minister Lord Darzi stated that the ratings would be published online. He said this would let patients decide where they wanted to receive their treatment and encourage competition between doctors to offer the highest standards of care.

The data will be gathered for four types of common surgery: knee replacements, hip replacements, varicose vein removal and hernia repair.

Lord Darzi added that the questionnaires could be used to collect information about other types of operation, including heart disease.

The PROMs have been introduced following Lord Darzi’s review of the health service, which recommended that patient opinion needed to be monitored in order to improve services.

"This is a very powerful tool that measures the success of operations as reported by patients themselves", he said. "The information collected will empower patients to choose a hospital that achieves the best results for the operation they need."

Lord Darzi added: "if you look at patient experience, you know - 'was I received well when I arrived at the hospital? Was the care something that I would recommend to friends?'. For a lot of patients this information is very relevant."

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