Lisa Drake on missed opportunties to improve the health journey

One of my colleagues on Cumbria's Health Scrutiny Committee has just, in a very timely message given that the committee will be hearing reports on digitisation of patient records on Tuesday, pointed out to me a blog post by Lisa Drake, who works for Seascale Medical practice.

Lisa is an advocate of making better use of digital technology to improve patient experience and care and the working lives of NHS staff.

She recently had an experience of being on the other side of the table when she needed an issue checked out in relation to her own health, and records her patient journey and experiences on her blog "What Lisa did next," here, in a post called "Digital Health - missed opportunities."

Happily she received the all clear so far as her own health was concerned - the lump was not dangerous and has been dealt with.

However, the course of events as described should make anyone who wants to see an efficient health service making the best use of new technology to give patients the best possible treatment and experience want to weep.

Ironically when the health service finally dealt with the most important bit, the actual clinical side of treating her as a patient, she "could not fault" the care she received.

"Clearly they are good at the clinical stuff." she wrote.

What an irony that when the critical bit of actually diagnosing and treating the patient was done perfectly, the opportunity to make patient journey as smooth and efficient as possible was missed because things which ought to have been easier were not done.

I know Matt Hancock is trying to encourage NHS Trusts to address and learn from this kind of issue and I hope we in Cumbria can do so.