Sharing the learning on patient and public involvement from CHI’s work (2004)

Summary

This report by the Commission for Health Improvement (CHI) sets out what the CHI has found out about the involvement of patients and the public from more than 300 inspections and from its research into the topic. It discusses what CHI looks for when assessing patient, service user, carer and public involvement (PPI), examples of how organisations are tackling this agenda and messages for the NHS in taking PPI forward.

Content

The main findings of the report are that:

• PPI activity is on the rise
• organisations are getting better at some aspects of PPI. The NHS is, on the whole, improving in some aspects of PPI, such as providing information for patients and undertaking qualitative and quantitative exercises in getting feedback from patients. But it is not doing as much to ensure that patients, carers, service users and the public influence decision making.
• PPI is not part of everyday practice. Pockets of good practice are not being shared across organisations or being picked up at strategic level. Organisations are failing to integrate PPI activities with other efforts to improve services and are not making PPI central to core activities.
• involvement is not leading to improvement. PPI is not yet having a major impact on policy and practice. This is despite a plethora of PPI initiatives. It is almost as if there is a brick wall between the activities going on and any changes on the ground that happen as a result.