This article covers:
Why we value your feedback
We really value you telling us about specific incidents and giving us general feedback. We handle about a million online consultations a month, and we collect a lot of data.
However, only you know what happens to patients after they’ve submitted an eConsult and only you can give us that qualitative detail. All parties have a professional and contractual duty to report and investigate clinical incidents (GMC: Good Medical Practice para. 22-23).
We also receive feedback from patients through our social media channels.
What is the difference between a Clinical Incident and Feedback?
A clinical incident is any unintended or unexpected incident that could have, or did, lead to harm for an individual patient, following submission of an online consultation.
Feedback is any general comment or concern about the clinical pathways. It could be something that’s missing, something that doesn’t work, or something you don’t understand.
Reporting a Clinical Incident
Please report all incidents to us, whether the patient came to any harm or not.
Do this via our portal at: https://econsult.net/clinical-incident-reporting.
This link is also posted at the end of the eConsult report.
You will be asked for a few details and an anonymised copy of the patient report. We do not handle any patient identifiable data (PID) for information governance reasons, so please ensure all PID is removed.
What happens next?
Clinical Incidents are assessed within 2 hours by a member of the Clinical Safety Team to check that no urgent system fix is required for patient safety reasons.
If none is required, the incident will be investigated and then discussed at the following fortnightly Clinical Governance Meeting. After that, you should receive a report within a week, explaining the circumstances of the incident, our analysis and, if appropriate, any actions that we will take to prevent any future such incidents.
Sending us Clinical Feedback
Please send it via: https://econsult.net/customer-area/primary-care/contact-us
or email practice.support@econsult.health
This is the same route for feedback of any kind, be it operational, technical or clinical.
What happens next?
Clinical Feedback is processed by our clinical team and assessed for its potential impact, contribution to patient safety and feasibility. After that, you will receive a written response on whether we will make any changes to the platform, and if not, why.
How is the clinical content created?
The clinical content is written by a panel of experienced Primary and Emergency Care practitioners, referring to the latest expert guidance on the topic (for example NICE, SIGN, best practice advice from professional bodies and patient groups). All our patient pathways are approved by our clinical governance panel which includes external reviewers, for example, Accident and Emergency Consultants, Psychiatrists etc. Once live, all patient pathways are reviewed annually.
Written by Dr Richard Wrigley, eConsult Clinical Governance team.
If you have any questions or you feel that this article could be improved, please feel free to give us some feedback by emailing us, pressing the emojis below or using the chat button on the bottom right-hand side of this page to speak to one of the eConsult team.