NHS Friends and Family Test to be mandatory for dentists
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- Published: Tuesday, 05 August 2014 08:09
- Written by News Editor
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NHS England intends to make the NHS Friends and Family Test (FFT) a contractual requirement for dentists with an NHS contract to implement from April 1, 2015. They say: ‘Our approach has been to make the FFT flexible and create as little burden on practices and patients as possible’. There will be no additional funding to implement the system.
Guidance has been sent to contractors and is available on NHS England website.They say that the FFT will provide all NHS patients with an opportunity to give feedback to the provider of those services and by April 2015 FFT will also be implemented across GP practices, outpatients, community and mental health services and ambulance services.
The FFT was introduced to the NHS in April 2013, since when over three million individual pieces of feedback have been collected on patients’ experiences of inpatient, A&E and maternity services. NHS England says that this demonstrates that ‘huge numbers of patients’ have been able to give feedback that might not have otherwise been heard.
Results of the initial FFT question (about whether you would recommend the practice to friends and family) will be submitted to NHS England on a monthly basis as part of the national collection.
NHS England will start to publish monthly data after three months have been collected, to give the new system time to bed in and to deal with any issues that arise.
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