Patient Opinion - Using patient insights to improve health services across three countries
Patients often know how their health services could be improved. Since 2005 Patient Opinion has used the web to direct their insights and stories to just the right people in hospitals (and government) across the UK who can reply publicly showing what they have learnt or changed as a result (http://bit.ly/ahmkBY)
Patient Opinion has already helped establish sister organisations in Spain and Italy
About You
Section 1: You
First Name
Paul
Last Name
Hodgkin
Website URL
Organization
Patient Opinion
Country
United Kingdom, SHF
Section 2: Your Organization
Organization Name
Patient Opinion
Organization Website
Organization Phone
00 44 114281 6256
Organization Address
SCEDU, 53 Mowbray St, Sheffield S3 8EN, UK
Is your organization a
Non‐profit/NGO/citizen sector organization
Organization Country
United Kingdom, SHF
Your idea
Name Your Project
Patient Opinion - Using patient insights to improve health services across three countries
Country and state your work focuses on
United Kingdom, XX
Describe Your Idea
Patients often know how their health services could be improved. Since 2005 Patient Opinion has used the web to direct their insights and stories to just the right people in hospitals (and government) across the UK who can reply publicly showing what they have learnt or changed as a result (http://bit.ly/ahmkBY)
Patient Opinion has already helped establish sister organisations in Spain and Italy
Innovation
What makes your idea unique?
Patient Opinion is unique as a social enterprise because we:
• Allow patients to talk publicly about their experiences of healthcare in all major NHS and independent providers in the UK.
• Provide a much needed real-time link between patient views and the delivery of healthcare by front-line staff.
• Enable a wide range of stakeholders to monitor and respond to patient comments including hospitals, 3rd party insurers, patient organisations, local government and Members of Parliament
• Are supporting similar organisations building citizen-feedback platforms that cover the police and local government. If successful this platform will allow citizens to give feedback about public services in a seamless way with each aspect of a story being delivered to the relevant local people in each public service.
• Have worked with sister organisations to develop similar systems in Italy and Spain using an ‘open business’ model where organisations access and contribute to our code base at no cost with all code and IP held in common for the benefit of all partners.
• Generate 95% of our income via subscriptions from health service organisations.
• Have traded at a profit for the last 3 years with a surplus equal to 18% of turnover last year
• Have secured significant investment from Channel 4 one of the UK’s major TV channels to help us reach the profile, volume and scale we need.
• Generate profile and publicity via partnerships with TV makers: From November 2010 our widgets will appear on Embarrassing Bodies (one of the biggest show on Channel 4) and other programmes. This will enable the audience to post stories, get replies and sometimes trigger improvements in their local hospitals. Linking mass broadcast audience to local action via our transparent, structured on-line conversations is a unique departure for television and generates very significant benefits to both sides.
Do you have a patent for this idea?
Impact
This Entry is about (Issues)
What impact have you had?
- Created a working system that links thousands of patients and carers with staff across the UK's National Health Service
- Currently around 60% of stories to subscribing hospitals generate a response, with 10% resulting in an improvement to a service – which means that when health services work closely with us, they make improvements for 10% of their feedback
- built a business model that trades generates a surplus for the last 3 years via subscriptions from >150 organisations.
- shared our software on a no-cost, open-business model to help establish two sister organisations in Italy and Spain. See http://www.e-criterium.org/ to see the system working in Spanish. The software is now easy to adapt to any language
- agreed significant investment from Channel 4 TV which will enable us to grow and scale. We are also now part of Embarrassing Bodies (one of the biggest UK health programmes) and are negotiating to incorporate Patient Opinion into health programmes on the BBC.
Problem
Health is a complicated business subject to frequent market failure and chronic shortage of resources. Patients, staff and family all have useful insight about how local services could be improved but these are currently largely ignored.
Web 2.0 gives everyone a voice and lowers the cost of collaborating dramatically. Patient Opinion exploits these new, lower costs to enable thousands of patients to interact with staff in structured, public, safe conversations. These conversations are large, very cheap resource that can help improve health services but which is as yet unexploited.
The key problems are not technological but how to create clear benefits to those sharing their stories in a way that delights busy staff so that both sides win. And to do all this with a business model that engenders trust and which is sufficiently independent to resist political and commercial pressures.
Actions
Over the last 6 years we have solved the legal, ethical, marketing, sales and financial problems and built a system that is recognised nationally but which has not yet hit the scale or volume we require.
In the next few months our collaboration with a range of television programmes will begin to pay off. This is supported by significant investment to enable us to scale as volumes of stories and sales grow.
We are also extending Patient Opinion into new markets such as residential care homes , and imaginative ways to reduce the costs of litigation in healthcare .
Currently we are undergoing a major re-branding and User Interface review and in November will be launching a new, rebranded version of the website. This represents a total investment in excess of £150,000.
Results
We have:
Survived the start-up phase of a disruptive innovation whose target customers are risk-averse hospitals!
Generated a surplus (last year this was 18% of turnover)
Won a reputation across the UK for consistent positive, collaborative, and highly innovative work.
Generated an increasing number of service improvements
Coped with the challenges of scaling from a small organsiation with <10 employees to a national platform sustaining
Successfully spread our system, at no cost, to Spain and Italy.
What will it take for your project to be successful over the next three years? Please address each year separately, if possible.
Y1:
Survive the recession!
Successful use of our collaboration with broadcast TV - with the ultimate aim of reaching a minumum of 50,000 stories and 5,000 service improvements per year.
Completing our brand review and redesign of the website
Y2: create 100,000 stories per year and 10,000 service improvements
increase turnover to £1 million
Begin piloting planned new services (for example our work to find alternatives to litigation for those who feel they been harmed by the health care they have received)
Y3: Hit 50% market penetration (currently 15%) of hospitals and insurers
Increase turnover to £1.5 million whilst generating surplus of at least 10%
Our overall goal is to have 100,000 stories donated to Patient Opinion each year. This will create:
Better services – NHS providers will use stories to make 10,000 changes every year
Better choices – as stories are used by patients to choose the best healthcare
Better governance – as stories are directed to regulator, government and commissioners
Empowered communities – local health stories will help people lead local service change
Better professionals – health education institutions use stories to train and develop professionals
Feeling better – people sharing stories feel better and create social solidarity
What would prevent your project from being a success?
The main risks are currently recession and credit crunch leading to lack of sales and/or cash flow problems.
How many people will your project serve annually?
More than 10,000
What is the average monthly household income in your target community, in US Dollars?
$100 ‐ 1000
Does your project seek to have an impact on public policy?
Yes
Sustainability
What stage is your project in?
Operating for more than 5 years
In what country?
United Kingdom, XX
Is your initiative connected to an established organization?
If yes, provide organization name.
How long has this organization been operating?
More than 5 years
Does your organization have a Board of Directors or an Advisory Board?
Yes
Does your organization have any non-monetary partnerships with NGOs?
Yes
Does your organization have any non-monetary partnerships with businesses?
Yes
Does your organization have any non-monetary partnerships with government?
Yes
Please tell us more about how these partnerships are critical to the success of your innovation.
We have developed a range of non-monetary partnerships that have proved crucial to our development:
• We provide free subscriptions to any relevant organisation with a turnover of <£1 million. This enables a wide range of patient organisations across the UK to use the site and in return their members post stories.
• Maverick TV. We partner with Maverick on Embarrassing Bodies which is a wonderful, free(!) way to generate profile and stories to the site.
• We partner with the UK Parliament to provide subscriptions to all MPs alerting them to what their constituents are saying about health. This service is provided for free and generates significant profile for Patient Opinion
• We partner with our two sister not-for-profit social enterprises in Italy (http://www.pazienti.org) and Spain (http://bit.ly/9Uex3W). We do not charge for these partnerships but gain great benefit by mutual collaboration – for example our Spanish friends internationalised our software which enables us to adapt the site to any language providing very quickly. In addition both teams had a wonderful 5 day working holiday in Barcelona!
What are the three most important actions needed to grow your initiative or organization?
1. Securing sales over the next year at a time of get financial turmoil. To do this we are using the investment from Channel 4 to emplying marketing and sales staff and expertise.
2. Getting better at generating publicity and profile so that more people know about the site and post stories to it. Again Channel 4 investment is supporting new staff to do this.
3. Manage the internal scaling problems for the company whilst at the same time handling the uncertainty and difficult sales environment created by the recession.
The Story
What was the defining moment that led you to this innovation?
In 2001 I set up Get Fresh Community Coffee, a social enterprise that provided employment to young people with learning difficulties. I was watching Craig sell coffee one day when I realised that despite his learning disabilities, he was much better at selling than I would ever be - the coffee had become the excuse for some one with LD and someone without to have a relationship that both liked and neither felt embarrassed about. This unique USP arose entirely because of Craig's disability.
This Eureka moment made me think about other businesses that used the experience of distress and disability as the source of competitive advantage. Initially I tried setting up Jabbers - a social enterprise that would license diabetics to give flu vaccinations each November under the supervision of family physicians. However by 2004 it was clear that a system like Patient Opinion would have much bigger impact and scope. (Incidentally the coffee business is still running though I am no longer involved. Craig has left but some of the other original disabled young people are still employed there.)
Tell us about the social innovator behind this idea.
Paul Hodgkin is a GP (family physician) by training and still works 1 day per week as a doctor. In 1985 he set up his own practice and grew this to 6 doctors and a staff of 20. From 1991 he helped set up and lead the Centre for innovation in Primary Care, a charity that developed innovative medical services in the community.
By 1999 he had left both these and was running Primary Care Futures, his own for-profit consultancy specializing in how technology and social changes were impacting medicine.
In 2003 he set up Get Fresh Community Coffee, a social enterprise that employed young people with learning difficulties to sell fresh roasted coffee to community groups. This firm is still running and employs some of the same young people that Paul started out with, although Paul is no longer involved in the business.
In 2004 he went on a year’s course at the School for Social Entrepreneurs in London and then started Patient Opinion which was incorporated in January 2005. Since then he has been Chief Executive and led Patient Opinion to being an acknowledged leader within its field.
As Patient Opinion became well known it began to receive requests to help people start similar organisations in other countries. We responded by sharing the Patient Opinion code base with selected groups for free. We did this because:
- Typically the people approaching us who we liked the most and who shared the same values as Patient Opinion, had no money.
- Patient Opinion had neither the capacity nor expertise needed to run similar systems in other countries
- We did not want to sell the software as this would have created legal obligations
- Sharing all code, and all future coding, within the ‘family’ of similar organisations reduced costs for everyone.
We have now been pursuing this ‘open business’ model with groups in Italy and Spain for 3 years. No money changes hands, all IP is held in common and the whole process is held together by an innovative ‘technology pool’ legal agreement adapted by Patient Opinion from similar agreements developed by mobile phone companies to allow mutual sharing of technology platforms.
Paul has written more than 20 papers for medical journals and more than 35 journalistic articles. He has been published by the Guardian, the Independent, the British Medical journal and The Lancet.
How did you first hear about Changemakers?
Email from Changemakers
If through another, please provide the name of the organization or company
50 words or fewer
 | 86 weeks agoPaul Hodgkin updated this Competition Entry. |
| 95 weeks agoPaul Hodgkin submitted this idea. |
