We aim to offer the best possible experience to people who use our services. We serve thousands of people every day in our community sites and hospitals, throughout Birmingham and Solihull. We offer a number of specialised services, many of these serve a regional catchment area.
We have developed a number of systems to gain patient feedback and we are planning to extend these further. The following examples are currently used by our trust:
Satisfaction Surveys
We have three regular surveys and we often develop short life dedicated surveys for specific areas of improvement, for example catering surveys.
These surveys can be downloaded or printed, and returned to our PALS team:
We are developing real time feedback, this seeks to gain opinions, which we can collate immediately through electronic methods. This means we can make swifter improvements to services - based on service user, carer or public feedback.
We are currently piloting this type of feedback system at The National Centre for Mental Health.
If you have used our services at the Barberry or Oleaster centres recently and you would like to give us some quick feedback then we would be grateful to receive your real time feedback.
Mystery Shoppers
We have trained a group of Experience service users and carers to audit services within our trust, without prior warning. Our auditors seek to make observations based on their visit and these are reported back to senior managers, matrons and the local managers on site. Our mystery shoppers are trained to be fair and consistent but to offer an honest view based on their experiences during the visit.
PALS Customer Care and Complaints
Our PALS team receive many comments and suggestions from service users, carers and the public. The reasons for each call taken are recorded and any feedback is collated into regular reports.
Our PALS team hold regular PALS Surgeries at inpatient locations around the trust. They record all feedback and ensure that local managers and teams learn from comments given.
When things go wrong and a complaint is made, this feedback is also recorded. An individual report is made, and if necessary an investigation is carried out. We detail anything we learn from investigating complaints and ensure that we share this knowledge with our staff.
PALS Customer Care is available between 8am - 8pm, Monday to Friday, on 0800 953 0045.
Complaints department is available on 0121 301 1084.
User and Carer Involvement
We have dedicated projects for user and carer involvement across the trust. Our users and carers regularly get involved in helping us plan our services, recruit staff, assess progress and in making suggestions for improvements.
Our Patient Experience Group meets monthly to plan our work and develop better measures to learn from the experiences of our service users. The group has a large number of external members including user volunteers, local advocacy organisations and voluntary sector providers.
Our Carers Voice Group meets every two months in order to learn from the views and experiences of our carers. We seek to ensure feedback from carers is acted upon.
Both groups seek to help our trust learn lessons and improve from experience gained.
To become more involved as a service user contact User Voice.
To become more involved as a carer please leave a message for our Head of PPI through our PALS team.
