Welcome to our first PEP Health Newsletter, where we hope to share with you some of our most exciting news and plans for the new year! PEP Health uses cutting-edge technology to give healthcare organisations actionable insights they need to have a direct and dramatic impact on patient experiences. Our empirically proven platform provides real-time insights about patients' experience of care from large volumes of public patient comments.
What happened in 2022
With 2022 coming to an end, it’s time we reflect on all that we’ve achieved this year at PEP Health – and what a fabulous year it's been! For the first time, our mission to improve patient experience has seen real, tangible benefits for patients. We’re tremendously proud and excited that our novel approach to unlocking what patients think about their healthcare has been validated and used in so many different ways during the year.
While there have been many highlights, we’ve handpicked a few that we’re particularly proud of, including:
- Our break into the US Market, with our services commencing in the USA and our first American contract going live earlier this year;
- The launching of our next-generation dashboards in the UK and USA, now including even more actionable insights;
- Working with many different stakeholders across healthcare including insurers, hospitals, regulators, national bodies and pharma;
- More than doubling the size of our team and hiring our first team member from the USA;
- Collecting more comments from patients than ever before!
What have we been working on?
What Patients Think – Texas
On the back of an exciting year, which saw us attend two of the largest health conferences in the UK and USA, we were delighted to share our latest insights into patient experience at the November HLTH 2022 conference in Las Vegas, showcasing our first ever ‘What Patient’s Think – Texas’ report.
Our findings showed that patient experience in Texas has steadily increased across the core quality healthcare domains and is now even higher than before the pandemic, bucking the trend seen in other regions. Despite overall state-wide improvements, regional and departmental variation persists, with higher patient-experience scores being recorded in urban Eastern regions of Texas compared to rural Western regions, and higher-scoring Surgical departments compared to Emergency Rooms and Mental Health departments. Scores within the Continuity of Care domain also remain low, with patients reporting dissatisfaction with providers’ clinical reporting and handling of medical records. Efforts to address these areas of concern could significantly enhance overall patient experience. Click here to find out more and request a copy of our report.
Launched Next Generation Dashboards
At PEP Health, we’re keen to listen to our customers to ensure our product works for everyone. That’s why, in November, we updated our UK dashboard design to reflect customer feedback, making it easier for users within hospital trusts to find out relevant information about their department. The updated design features an external benchmarking section which charts trusts’ external moving averages against their neighbours and national/regional averages, as well as an internal section providing a more detailed breakdown of each trusts’ internal Friends and Family Test (FFT) data. These sections make it clearer for users to see exactly where their data is coming from and to review the latest patient-experience comments regarding their department or ward. Now seeing what patients really think about their healthcare experiences couldn’t be easier.
CQC State of Care
During the summer, our team worked with the Care Quality Commission (CQC) to analyse patient experience across England – by region, Integrated Care System (ICS), and trust – with a focus on Urgent and Emergency Care (UEC) and Maternity Care. Our findings were published in the CQC State of Care report, which shines a spotlight on the current difficulties facing the NHS. Being able to understand what patients are thinking and experiencing – in real time – is critical in helping the NHS navigate this period of sustained pressure. Our key findings for Urgent and Emergency Care and Emergency Care are summarised below:
Urgent & Emergency Care:
- Patient experience scores for UEC have decreased significantly across England since mid-2021 and have not yet fully recovered;
- Only one ICS in England has improved patient experience for UEC over the last 12 months;
- Scores for all provider types (including GP, Ambulance, Urgent Treatment Centres) have decreased over the same period;
- The South West and North East of England have the highest patient-experience scores for UEC while London has the lowest.
Maternity Care:
- Overall patient-experience scores are now higher for Maternity Care than any other type of care;
- The North East of England scores highest for patient experience in Maternity Care, driven by excellent Communication & Involvement scores;
- Communication & Involvement is a key determiner in Maternity Care patient experience, with higher Communication & Involvement scores reflecting more positive reviews, even when complications arise during pregnancy and childbirth.
What’s Next for PEP Health?
With our sights now set on 2023, we look forward to another tremendous year of growth and expansion at PEP Health, both internally in our team and externally across the UK, USA and other international markets. With lots on the agenda for the new year, here’s what you can expect to see from us:
- Collecting and analysing tens of millions of public comments – more than ever before;
- Attending more international conferences and events to discuss what we do at PEP Health and the latest developments in patient experience – hot off the press;
- Providing even more advanced analytics, insights and dashboard enhancements to investigate and explain patient experience, not only by location but by disease and medication too!
To learn more about what we’re doing at PEP Health, contact us through our website or email enquiries@pephealth.ai where we will be more than happy to assist with any enquiries.
Season’s Greetings and a Happy New Year!
