This story was first published in digitalhealth.net
CQC to monitor social media complaints
Peter Wyman, chairman of the Care Quality Commission (CQC), commented in an interview with the Daily Telegraph that comments on social media could be used to learn of possible NHS failings.
Wyman said the plans were part of an overhaul of inspections to use the negative comments as ‘early intelligence’ of potential signalling problems. He said the CQC needed to make better use of official data while remaining conscious of ‘anecdotal concerns’ such as those expressed on social media sites.
Wyman explained: “There are an awful lot of ways to capture what people are saying – it could be what people are saying on Facebook, it could be formal patient complaints, it could be what Healthwatch [local patient groups] are saying.
“If you have got a maternity unit which was good when we last inspected and suddenly you get staff and the public saying they aren’t happy then that is the time to be asking questions, rather than waiting for something awful to happen to mothers and babies. We live in a world of big data, we need to be able to capture it and analyse it intelligently.”
The CQC plans are part of a wider consultation regarding an overhaul of its regulation systems, in order to cope with a 25 per cent cut in funding from central government, reducing its annual spend from £249 million to £217 million in 2019-20.
The resulting strategy is expected to be announced in May, however there is no know timescale for when the changes will be implemented.
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