Meridian Intelligence

Driving organisational change through patient experience feedback

The world of patient experience is changing. This is being driven in part by a legislative imperative, with the 2010 White Paper stating that patient experience and its measurement should be major NHS priorities.

But it is also vital because, in an era of increasing choice and competition, it presents risks and opportunities which affect an organisation’s reputation and revenue. And of course, understanding and acting to improve patients’ experiences is the right thing to do and an important motivator for staff.

Real-time data collection and reporting – turning data into insight

Dr Foster and Optimum Contact work in partnership to deliver the market-leading solution for collecting and reporting patient experience data. This solution, known as Meridian Intelligence, provides a real-time platform which is flexible and cost-effective. It allows our NHS customers to capture data – whether patient feedback, audit activity, or safety and quality metrics – then analyse that data and report it.

The platform is designed to deliver insight of real value, in real time, to the right people within your organisation. Dashboards are configured to meet the needs of individuals or groups of users, while the reports and alerts enable you to create and execute action plans based on patient feedback.

Data can be captured through multiple channels including:

• Online
• Handheld devices
• Email
• Kiosks
• SMS text
• Paper
• Telephone

Supporting the full patient experience organisational process

Building on the partnership with Optimum Contact, Dr Foster’s solutions support the full organisational process, from carrying out a patient experience audit and forming a strategy, to collecting and analysing data,  to designing services, communicating with patients and measuring performance.

The solutions are founded on the work undertaken by Dr Foster and an independent reference group to produce The Intelligent Board 2010: Patient Experience. This report demonstrates how a holistic approach can not only improve the experiences of patients and staff, but also enable NHS organisations to achieve business development and financial benefits, inform the design of services and improve patient outcomes and safety.

Benefits of our approach

• Brings together 1) Optimum Contact’s market-leading data collection and reporting platform, and 2) Dr Foster’s ability to benchmark performance and triangulate this with outcome data and Patient Reported Outcome Measures (PROMs), which informs the design of strategies and services.
• Provides insight to improve business development, financial costs, service design, patient outcomes and patient safety.
• Maximises revenue-generating opportunities around Commissioning for Quality and Innovation (CQUIN)and provides tangible input for business development and marketing programmes.

Benefits of Meridian Intelligence

• A robust, flexible and reliable technology platform that gives complete peace of mind to users.
• Quick and easy to build questionnaires, with the benefit of access to ‘best practice’ surveys.
• Multi-channel data collection solutions to meet the specific needs of your organisation, patients and staff.
• Self-management of surveys and scorecards, enabling you to respond quickly to changing demands.
• Full service for assisted completion, including telephone service and data entry if required.
• Easy-to-use data export technology, which enables benchmarking and rapid reporting to multiple stakeholders.
• A complete performance management solution – use it for many data collection requirements, such as patient experience and quality and safety audits. For example, some trusts have used the solution to assist them with mattress audits, manual handling assessments and risk assessments.

Our track record

Dr Foster launched the award-winning Patient Experience Tracker (PET) in 2006. This was the first handheld, electronic feedback device available to the NHS to measure patient and staff satisfaction on a real-time basis.

Optimum Contact Limited is a technologybased provider of solutions for patient and staff feedback and audit measurement. Meridian Intelligence has been developed to specifically address the needs of the NHS, the concept being to enable trusts to gather high volumes of feedback, through any channel, in a cost-effective manner.

Trusts that have implemented Meridian Intelligence are capturing feedback in real time, with real-time reporting at a trustwide level. This enables stakeholders to have a clear understanding of how the organisation is performing. Reporting datasets include patient experience measures (PEMs), PROMs and CQUIN measures, plus a variety of quality and safety metrics.

Optimum Contact holds accreditations in ISO 9001 (quality management), ISO 14001 (environmental management) and ISO 27001 (data and system security).

Today, real-time feedback is a national priority and over 150 NHS organisations, including acute trusts, PCTs and mental health trusts, are regularly using solutions from Dr Foster and Optimum Contact to improve their patients’ experiences. The partnership brings together Dr Foster’s ability to turn health data into insight with Optimum Contact’s market-leading data collection and reporting platform.

Download the Meridian Intelligence factsheet