The Countess of Chester Hospital has been ranked among the best performing trusts in the first set of results published for the Friends & Family Test.
The Friends & Family Test was introduced across the country in April 2013 to give patients the opportunity to feedback about their experience within hospital trusts by saying whether or not they would recommend their ward or A&E department to friends and family.
After responses were assessed, each hospital was then given a score based on patient satisfaction levels - if every single patient said they would be 'extremely likely' to recommend the service the ward would receive a score of 100, if every single patient said they would be 'neither unlikely nor likely', 'unlikely' or 'extremely unlikely' to recommend the service, the trust receives a score of minus 100.
Based on 1,202 responses for June 2013 the Countess of Chester Hospital achieved a score of 77 for A&E which placed the Trust joint 12th out of 144 trusts. The Trust scored 79 for inpatients, which placed the Trust joint 42nd out of 170 Trust. For A&E the Countess was among the top 10% performing trusts for June and among the top 25% performing trusts for inpatients.
Acting Deputy Director of Nursing, Sian Williams said: "These results are great news for the Trust and evidence that we are trying to provide the best possible service to our patients. We are extremely committed to using patient experience to drive our performance and this is one of many ways we are doing this."
There has been some criticism from patient groups that the Friends & Family Test can be viewed as misleading, however the Countess has implemented it alongside other methods of gaining patient feedback. Sian added: "The Friends & Family Test is very much a tin-opener to more detailed patient feedback and we have recently introduced 24/7 real-time patient feedback across the Trust which gives even more insight to the patient experience. However, as a stand-alone method of feedback we are proud that at this early stage we are among the best performing Trusts for the Friends & Family Test and we aim to maintain that level of performance consistently over the coming months."