A healthy dose of scepticism

Why is it that British people are so reticent to complain in restaurants? It’s undoubtedly partly because we Brits were brought up to believe that quiet acceptance is preferable to making a fuss. But there is also the fact that irritated customers simply prefer to get even while retaining their anonymity, denying future custom and perhaps passing negative comment to friends, or even on review websites, once far away from the influence of a vengeful kitchen.

It is with this in mind that I came across the launch of a new website last week called “iWantGreatCare.org“. The site is run by an independent organisation with the laudable aim of empowering patients to share feedback and experiences about care they have received, and in particular about the doctors and medical staff that cared for them.

Working in the area of customer experience myself, I am a firm believer in the need for and value of feedback. Commercial organisations crave it and when properly gathered and analysed it can provide a level of insight that is often otherwise impossible to get. Sadly it seems to me that iWantGreatCare’s new service could be open to a number of avenues of abuse, and it’s hard to know where to start.

Firstly, every user of the site is requested to provide an email address prior to registration. Although it is claimed users can leave feedback without identifying themselves, it is hard to see how that anonymity can be guaranteed. Another problem is that site will never be effective until it achieves a critical mass of customer-led content, and I am not sure it will ever reach this tipping point when the vast majority of doctors have absolutely no input at all. Who will ever be the first to speak up? Is the correlation between treatment and complaint going to be obvious and valuable? And if so what is the best outcome we could expect?

I strongly suspect that most patients will never entirely trust that their identity and their complaint will remain separate, unconnected entries. Perhaps they might even suspect that their next doctor or carer might be forewarned that they are looking after a troublemaker, compromising their level of care. This isn’t just paranoia, it is simply human nature – avoiding making the kitchen angry before the meal is prepared, if you like.

iWantGreatCare allows visitors to score their doctor using three sliding bars that represent ‘trust’, ‘listening’ and the likelihood of a ‘recommendation’. What particularly interests me though, is the tick box at the bottom in which users may opt in to receive “occasional news and updates”. Will this prove to be like Twitter for doctors? It feels like old and new practices are colliding with the application of very modern social web practices for a health service perceived as sedate and old fashioned. Perhaps one day ‘Amazon-like’ capabilities will be added, using behavioural data to make recommendations to patients that suggest: “Patients who had surgery for a duodenal ulcer also had surgery for psoriasis of the liver. Add to basket?”

We’ll certainly keep an eye on this interesting site’s progress and user adoption, and will let you know if iWantGreatCare takes a long time to get on its feet or rapidly finds itself in the rudest of health.