The power of consumer feedback came back to the care industry recently with the launch of a new website that provides user feedback on a range of care related industries such as childcare,home-care and care homes. Since the demise of the CQC’s star rating system there has been a notable absence of any meaningful measure of quality in the industry.
Quality of care is, of course, entirely subjective and even the previous star rating system relied heavily on feedback from clients along with the normal box-ticking procedures. The government’s stated objective of raising the quality and cost effectiveness of care through its NHS reforms are predicated not just on the private sector’s ability to deliver such change but also on a true measure of care quality that allows effective comparisons across regions and specialities. Take away the current waiting times analysis so favoured by politicians and hospital managers and there is little else of substance that can effectively measure care quality. This of course was the original role of the CQC, but it became one that it abdicated so publicly with the care home scandals back in 2011.
At Prestige Nursing + Care we have long campaigned for a return to a meaningful way of comparing the quality of care so that individuals, many of whom are in receipt of both Direct Payments or Individual Budgets, can make an informed choice about their care. Anyone who has shopped at Amazon or on EBay can testify to the latent power of a rating system to subtly influence buying decisions based on other’s experiences. Yet the travails of TripAdvisor which has come under increasing scrutiny for its inability to properly police the veracity of feedback sounds a cautionary tale. The Good Care Guide’s plans to provide real, honest feedback on what is available is laudable, but policing it will be another matter. Unless there are stringent procedures in place to prevent the sort of malicious feedback that TripAdvisor sometimes attracts, both care providers and the consumers themselves will suffer as they will stop believing what they read. There is compelling evidence that beneficial reviews do create a virtuous circle of even better care, as was the case with some hospitals under the NHS Choices scheme. Transparency and accountability in care are what everyone should be striving for, but this comes with a cost – the diligent and often painstaking accrual of information by bodies such as the CQC was once the gold standard, and should still be the primary method of measuring quality. Offering a vast notice board for people to add their own comments on care will certainly add to the debate, but it cannot and should not replace what has gone before.
