Hospital launches new service to help patients

8 May 2001

Patients at the West Suffolk Hospital NHS Trust are to benefit from on-the-spot help, advice and support from a new patient advocacy and liaison service (PALS) being set up following a successful bid by the Trust to be a pilot site, one of eleven in the Eastern Region chosen to do so.

People needing information about hospital services or with questions about treatment will be able to speak to a liaison officer who will answer their questions or, if they are not able to, contact someone who can. The aim is to resolve as soon as possible any queries or concerns that patients, relatives and visitors might have. Staff working for PALS will have direct access to Johanna Finn, Trust Chief Executive.

The dedicated PALS help desk will be manned from 8.30am until 8pm every weekday, it is one of two PALS project that the trust is receiving £58,000 to implement from the Eastern Region Office of the NHS Executive. Both initiatives will be launched in September.

The second project is to create a web site to enable members of the public to get information about services provided by the Trust.

“The Patient Advocacy and Liaison Service is all about improving customer care," said Johanna Finn. "Patients and relatives who have queries about our services will be able to contact the PALS help desk and be given a swift and efficient response."

The West Suffolk will relay its experience in setting up the scheme to other trusts who will be implementing schemes next year. PALS will operate in every NHS trust including primary care trusts by April 2002.

The web site connection will be an extension of the trust's award-winning electronic 'Pink Book', which gives clinicians up-to-date information about health care available in West Suffolk and Thetford. Details of new appointments and services, individual consultant information and latest research and development findings are all available on it at the touch of a button.

"I am pleased that we have been nominated as a pilot site, because our patients will benefit from this initiative sooner rather than later," said Jo Finn. "PALS is all part of the process of empowering patients by providing them with as much information as possible about their treatment and the services."

The introduction of the Patient Advocacy and Liaison Service comes after a wide-ranging consultation exercise involving patients, the general public, NHS staff and professional bodies. The feedback showed that patients felt they did not have a strong enough say in the health service. Most importantly they said they wanted on-the-spot help when things went wrong. PALS is intended to provide this help.