Working in partnership with our patients

Information is a form of currency, giving power to those who possess it. A uniting theme behind all of our work at Bury Knowle has been to enable both users and providers of health services to be provided with as much “real time” information as possible, in order to help them make the best possible health-decisions.

We see that the key role of health care professionals is to form a partnership with patients to enable information “brokering” within that partnership. As mentioned previously our research has shown that this information exchange and partnership enables much better health decisions to be made by both patients and professionals.

Patient partnership services that might be of benefit to the local population could include:

• Employment of an “Patient Support Worker” to see families and patients to give health, social and financial information
• Setting up of an “Information Room” at the site to enable easy access to written and online information resources
• Enabling patient access to their health records
• Development of a patient internet portal and leaflets, giving useful and latest practice information, in relevant languages
• Development of an open complaints procedure with formal review, write up and publication of complaints
• Publication of quarterly patient-newsletter
• Publication of annual patient survey (including practice response to survey findings and recommendations)
• Exploring improving transport links between geographically remote communities and the health centre sites

Patient Participation

New patient health check

Patient Held Records