People are expressing high satisfaction with the services they received during their hospitalization in NHS hospitals through the text messages (SMS) they have been able to send to the Ministry of Health since last July.

As the data available to “THEMA” shows, they give “excellent” ratings to the adequacy of doctors and the coverage of laboratories with medical equipment, with “very good” to the difficult area concerning their trust in health professionals, doctors or nurses, but they give low marks to the cleaning and feeding services.

About 80,000 SMS from as many inpatients had arrived by the end of September on the digital evaluation platform activated by the Ministries of Health and Digital Governance to improve health services.

The… first quarter grades were presented to the heads of hospitals during a two-day meeting they had recently with the ministry’s political leadership.

The digital tool for evaluating the inpatient experience in hospitals of the NHS, as the SMS system is called, was supervised by Health Minister Adonis Georgiades, while the technical part was undertaken by Deputy Health Minister Marios Themistocleous and Secretary General of Health Services Lillian Vildiridis.

The latter also presented the first rough results to the governors and deputy governors, but informed them that from November they will have autonomous access to the evaluation data as far as only the hospital they run is concerned.

Similarly, the governors of the Health Regions (HRAs) will have the picture for all hospitals under their jurisdiction.

It should be noted that only general and university public hospitals are being evaluated at this stage. At a later stage, it is expected that paediatric, psychiatric and oncology hospitals will be included due to the need for special adaptation of the questionnaires.

The governors will have to take the necessary corrective actions that can be taken by themselves – and in any case cooperate with the heads of the MHHs and the ministry to solve the problems pointed out by patients.

Excellent and average performance

The questionnaire consists of 35 questions, covering the key areas of quality in hospital care, including accessibility, care coordination, quality and human resources, patient information and involvement, cleanliness and sanitary conditions, support at discharge, and overall care assessment. For the two-day meeting and briefing of NHS managers with the leadership of the Ministry of Health, the approximately 80,000 questionnaires were processed, and 10 of the 35 questions were selected, but it is considered that they provide a representative picture per evaluation axis. The majority of patients express high satisfaction with medical equipment and staf,f with a positive response rate of 92%. People rate the verbal and written instructions given at discharge (90%) as almost “excellent”.
Their ratings are positive when it comes to health professionals and how much they trust them. 84% of inpatients rated their trust relationship with their treating physicians as 4 or 5 (excellent 5) and 80% gave the same rating for their trust relationship with nursing staff.

Slightly lower is the overall satisfaction rate with the existence of coordination and cooperation between hospital departments (78%).

But some areas need improvement, which may not be… news, but is certainly being recorded by patients for the first time.

The cleanliness of inpatient wards is rated 4 or 5 (with an excellent 5) by 69% of patients, indicating the need for further improvement.

Even lower are the satisfaction rates of inpatients related to the competence of nursing staff (61%) and their involvement in shaping decisions about their care and treatment (62%), elements that directly affect their hospital experience.

They have a direct impact on the patient’s immediate experience.

Finally, the quality of food was recorded as the weakest parameter of the hospitalization experience, with only 48% of patients rating it positively.

How many people respond to SMS

“We wish you well. Your health, like your opinion, is valuable to the NHS. Help us improve it by filling in a short, anonymous questionnaire about your hospitalisation,” reads the text message sent to everyone who is hospitalised three days after being discharged.

The message contains a link to the questionnaire, with a completion time of no more than three minutes. However, the SMS remains active for seven days after it is sent.

The response from citizens has been encouraging, but it has not yet reached the level that would fully satisfy the ministry.

The fact that many inpatients are elderly and probably not familiar with digital media affects the number of questionnaires completed. In addition, the initiative is still in its early stages and many citizens are not aware of the new facility.

The Ministry of Health estimates that as the evaluation becomes more widely known, the number of responses will increase, providing valuable information to the ministry and hospital administrations.

Attica first

For the geographical distribution of the questionnaires, the territory was divided into five regions: Attica, Thessaloniki, mainland Greece, island Greece and Crete.

35.2% of the evaluation came from mainland Greece. In third place, with a much lower participation in the evaluation of the NHS, is the region of Thessaloniki, with only 16.8% of all inpatients. The other regions scored even lower: Crete, 6.2% and the island of Greece, 5.6%.

In terms of patient satisfaction, rates are uniformly high across the country. The overall average satisfaction ranges from 4.02 to 4.07 out of 5.

Those hospitalized in hospitals in Attica give an overall satisfaction rating of 4.07 out of 5, and the same high rating comes from those hospitalized in hospitals in Thessaloniki (4.05 out of 5). In hospitals in the island country, the rating is also positive, with people giving a satisfaction rating of 4.04 out of 5.

A lower level of satisfaction is shown in the SMSs responded to by those who were treated in hospitals on the mainland and Crete. The weighted overall average for all regions is 4.04/5, confirming that patients across the country rate the care they received positively.