Our vision is for a patient-led NHS, where staff and the communities they serve work in partnership to improve both their own health and the planning and delivery of healthcare services. Ensuring that the NHS across the North West of England is engaging with patients and stakeholders is part of our role.
Public and patient involvement
Hearing a patient's views and experience of the delivery of NHS services helps us to check the development and improvement of services. Evaluating the patient experience and the quality of care received often helps the NHS discover better ways of working.
We support PCTs to improve the ways they communicate with their patients and with local people to make sure people understand what PCTs do and how they commission services on behalf of the North West population. This encourages local people to get involved in decisions around the future direction of services and feed in their views and experiences.
There are many ways in which the NHS invites comments and listens to its patients.
- Patient and Advice Liaison Services (PALS) or equivalent customer services, are based in each Hospital Trust and PCT. They support patients by providing advice and information on local healthcare issues.
- Formal consultations are regularly organised with patients and the public to give people the opportunity to influence changes to local services