NHS Friends and Family Test Implementation in GP practices July 2014

FFT becomes a contractual requirement from 1 December 2014 The opportunity to give feedback through FFT should be available to every NHS patient The feedback highlights good experience as well as opportunities for improvement Our approach is to be as flexible as possible There are a number of mandatory requirements There are a number of local options Friends and Family Test - GPs

There are a small number of requirements that practices must do: Provide an opportunity for patients to give anonymous feedback through the FFT Use the standard wording of the FFT question and the responses Include at least one follow up question which allows the opportunity to provide free text (as a result, “token” systems are not allowed) Submit data to NHS England each month Publish results The mandatory requirements

The wording of the question must be as follows: “We would like you to think about your recent experience of our service. How likely are you to recommend our GP practice to friends and family if they needed similar care or treatment?” Where a person has been unable to respond to the initial FFT question, the question may be supplemented and an appropriate response scale used. This is permitted to support inclusion The FFT question

The responses to the question must be: Extremely likely Likely Neither likely nor unlikely Unlikely Extremely unlikely Don’t know The FFT responses

Patients do not have to be asked to answer the FFT question after every appointment or interaction with the practice Practices can choose their own follow up question and add other questions to focus on issues they want feedback on Practices are responsible for the arrangements they make for local collection and publication of results Local flexibility is permitted over the degree and frequency of promotion of the FFT Local options 1

NHS England is not prescribing how the results of the FFT are to be used to improve local services If their contract allows it, practices can engage a third party supplier to run their FFT There may be times when it is not appropriate or possible to pro-actively seek feedback through FFT – eg when it may cause distress Patients can be helped to provide feedback through FFT if they need it Local options 2

Patients do not need to be asked to respond to the FFT question after every interaction – NHS England is not setting a response rate target for GP practices The opportunity should be available for patients who wish to provide feedback through the FFT at any time NHS England has published advice on gathering feedback from people who are unable to respond to the formal FFT question Practices may decide to promote FFT to increase uptake, or gain feedback from particular sections of their population Who and when

Practices are encouraged to ask demographic questions to collect equality and diversity information This will help to: ensure they are getting feedback from a reasonable spread of their local population enable comparisons between the experiences of different groups This data is not reported to NHS England Demographic data

For each practice, NHS England will publish each month: The number of each category of response The number of responses collected through different collection modes (eg postcards, websites, SMS etc) The results – the format for the publication of the results is under discussion Practice list size, to give a sense of participation – we are not publishing a formal response rate National publication

Practices are required to publish monthly results locally NHS England is not mandating how this is to be done If the practice wishes to publish free text comments, patients must be offered an opt out Local publication

You can find the guidance for GP practices at: NHS England has also published guidance for other NHS services, which includes advice, support and resources: imp-guid-14.pdf Further information

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