Department of Health Customer Insight Unit, Customer Insight Project
Within the health service there is a groundswell of interest in fresh approaches to understanding and engaging with customers and their potential to deliver better health, better care and better value. The challenge is to turn that interest into a meaningful agenda for change by building the business and policy case for a more thoroughgoing customer-centredness in commissioning and delivery. A critical first step in articulating that case is achieving clarity about how these fresh approaches differ from existing approaches to research and consultation. How do we unlock new value, rather than merely repeat the things we have heard from patients and public many times before? The Department of Health Customer Insight Unit commissioned SHM to undertake a project to explore how NHS organisations – and especially PCTs – can move beyond traditional modes of research and consultation to new approaches designed to gather deep insight about local populations.
SHM undertook a project that sought to test the extent to which fresh approaches to customer insight can help address real commissioning and service delivery issues. In one area, we focused on understanding how customer insight could support and enrich existing work to improve services for older people with fractured neck or femur (broken hip) injuries. The project involved SHM facilitating two workshops with two different groups of older people.
The main implication of the customer insight project is for the local PCT’s primary prevention activity focused on campaigns designed to inform older people about preventing accidents. Insights into the motivational mindsets of older people – and the ways in which these impact on their willingness to use health services – are currently being incorporated into training and development programmes for local GP surgery staff. This training is designed to enable surgery staff to identify and work with the particular mindsets of older people’ and therefore engage them more effectively in discussions about maintaining their health.
Within the health service there is a groundswell of interest in fresh approaches to understanding and engaging with customers and their potential to deliver better health, better care and better value. The challenge is to turn that interest into a meaningful agenda for change by building the business and policy case for a more thoroughgoing customer-centredness in commissioning and delivery. A critical first step in articulating that case is achieving clarity about how these fresh approaches differ from existing approaches to research and consultation. How do we unlock new value, rather than merely repeat the things we have heard from patients and public many times before? The Department of Health Customer Insight Unit commissioned SHM to undertake a project to explore how NHS organisations – and especially PCTs – can move beyond traditional modes of research and consultation to new approaches designed to gather deep insight about local populations.
SHM undertook a project that sought to test the extent to which fresh approaches to customer insight can help address real commissioning and service delivery issues. In one area, we focused on understanding how customer insight could support and enrich existing work to improve services for older people with fractured neck or femur (broken hip) injuries. The project involved SHM facilitating two workshops with two different groups of older people.
- The first workshop involved a group of older people recruited from a nearby GP surgery. The older people were aged 70-85, were mobile and active and considered themselves to be healthy.
- The second workshop involved older people recruited via an older people’s organisation. The older people were aged 75-90, and all of them had received extensive hospital treatment and follow-up healthcare support for fractured hips caused by falls; and some had received hip replacements.
The main implication of the customer insight project is for the local PCT’s primary prevention activity focused on campaigns designed to inform older people about preventing accidents. Insights into the motivational mindsets of older people – and the ways in which these impact on their willingness to use health services – are currently being incorporated into training and development programmes for local GP surgery staff. This training is designed to enable surgery staff to identify and work with the particular mindsets of older people’ and therefore engage them more effectively in discussions about maintaining their health.
