Barts in east London to spend £100,000 on new platform for collating FFT data
The largest NHS trust in England is planning to spend £100,000 on a new digital system of gathering feedback from patients and their carers.
Barts Health and NHS Trust in east London has issued an opportunity notice notifying suppliers that it “wishes to procure a new digital system to elicit patient, patient and carer feedback” through the NHS Friends and Family Test (FFT).
The trust added: “This will include a range of options for surveying including paper, text, telephone, and online survey methods.”
The FHT was introduced in 2013 to ask NHS users and those that look after them to evaluate the service they received from the care provider in question. The test – which asks participants to rank, on a six-point scale, how likely they are to recommend the hospital, surgery, or other care provider – is typically given to patients as they are discharged or sent out shortly thereafter.
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Since April 2014, all NHS trusts have also been required to use the FFT to quiz their staff about whether they would recommend their employer as a workplace. Barts said that it is looking for a supplier that can help it achieve response rates in the upper quartile.
“We would expect the successful provider to agree an improvement trajectory which will see Barts Health in the top 25% in the country for return rates with the FFT,” it said.
The trust is looking to gather expressions of interest between now and 17 October. The contract with the chosen supplier is scheduled to kick off on 1 December and last for one year.
Barts operates four hospitals and a wide range of community health sites across east London, serving a total of 2.5 million citizens.