What people have told us about NHS administration
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Healthwatch England analysed their national datasets to look into the experiences of people with NHS administration. This analysis was carried out as part of a project that was initiated by The King’s Fund in December 2019.
Two sets of data were analysed - data shared by the local Healthwatch with Healthwatch England via the CiviCRM system and via reports between April 2019 and April 2020. The findings shed light on how poor admin affected experiences of care for the following groups of people:
- Sporadic users of health services - i.e. people who generally interact with NHS services only occasionally. Themes include, issues with GP registration, booking GP appointments, receiving incorrect information, and errors in communication, referrals, and prescriptions.
- People who are/have been on the musculoskeletal (MSK) and cancer care pathway. Themes include, delays in receiving appointment letters, receiving incorrect letters, misplaced or delayed test results, and inaccurate communication.
- People who use multiple health services, on a regular basis. Themes include, referral delays, delays in receiving prescriptions including getting incorrect medications, inaccuracies in communication between and with the services and getting conflicting information from different service providers.
- The report also highlights how poor admin issues in the NHS impacts specific groups of people such as the elderly, people with language barriers and those who have sight or hearing impairments.