We are delighted to welcome Healthwatch as our new member! Have a look at our Q&A with their External Affairs Manager, Rebecca Curtayne, to find out about their views on information sharing in health and care and the role of standards. 

What are the challenges people experience about information sharing in health and care settings? 

The main issue we hear is people feeling that information hasn’t been properly shared within the NHS or between health and social care services at transition points in their care. This means people, their relatives or carer(s) find themselves repeating their stories and background to multiple professionals, reducing confidence that all services have a holistic understanding of their needs. We also hear about inconsistent sharing between services of vital accessibility information about people, which is needed to ensure services communicate with the person in the format they require. As a result, services may not be aware that a person is deaf, visually impaired, has a learning disability or has other communication needs.

Standards support consistent, clear information sharing across care settings. Why do you think they are important?  

In a universal health system, standards should drive consistent use and sharing of person’s information, regardless of which part of the system pepople are interacting with, where they live, and their own personal characteristics. Standards are not just about efficiency, quality, and safety but equalities as well.

How can standards reflect what people think is most important about information sharing? How can we best engage people using health and care services in standards development?

Involving organisations like Healthwatch England is a great start! As the statutory patient and public voice body in England, we can share the themes and latest issues that people bring to us. We are complemented by a network of 153 local Healthwatch who work at a grassroots level to understand the experiences of patients and adult social care users.  There are also many other national and local charities doing fantastic work in supporting people with a wide variety of medical conditions and needs. Overall, we find the best approach to engagement is to reach out – don’t expect people will just answer an online survey – go to where they are or to the trusted organisations that advocate for their needs.

What benefits have you seen from standards implementation? 

People really value the end-result of standards implementation, whether that’s timely, comprehensive discharge letters, dynamic records that they feel they jointly own through episodes of care like maternity, jargon-free and respectful communication, or a culture of shared decision-making and transparency.

How do you hope Healthwatch will benefit from membership of the PRSB?

We’re always excited about new opportunities to share public experiences and recommendations to improve various aspects of health and care. We also hope the membership will help us build a greater understanding of the mechanics behind standards the PRSB develops as well as to understand the aims we share with your wide network of members.

How can we jointly create more pull in the system to get standards used so people’s information is available when and where it is needed for care?

We think this goes back to the principle of building in regular evaluation of the experiences of real-life end users – whether that’s clinicians, administrative teams or patients. With that evidence, we can have constructive discussions about any challenges and areas for improvements. Ultimately, we’re after the same thing – safe, good quality and timely care for people – and from that will flow the key goals of various parts of the system, such as greater efficiencies, cost-savings or clinical outcomes.