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by MistahKoala 1471 days ago
This is an interesting issue. First, I hope your mum and family are getting acceptable care and support, and that she gets the outcome she wants from it.

I know what it's like to see or experience something at the patient end of things and feel the urge to do something about it. It's difficult to find obvious ways forward with that in the NHS system, and the common ways for patients to raise complex and niche issues - MPs or the NHS' public-facing channels - can produce dispiriting responses.

I get the impression you're in England, so my assumptions here are about NHS England. There's been a push (and requirement) in recent years for Patient and Public Voice (PPV) - closer public involvement in the design, production and governance of NHS services - so there should be increasing opportunities for the public to act on their experiences. In practice, there doesn't seem to be much of an open invitation to public involvement in digital at the national level yet.

As you didn't mention it, you might be interested to know that, as well as the breast screening report you mentioned, there has also been a recent review of adults screening services [1]. That's led to NHSX's Digital Transformation of Screening programme [2], with objectives directly relevant to your issue. There's a contact email address that might reach someone more likely to grok it and/or explain the programme's routes for PPV input.

There's also some information about the current digital screening services, including named heads and leads [3]. Maybe a direct approach to one or some of them about how you can influence the issue (and highlight the shortcomings of the approaches you've tried)?

[1] https://www.england.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/report...

[2] https://www.nhsx.nhs.uk/key-tools-and-info/digital-transform...

[3] https://digital.nhs.uk/about-nhs-digital/our-organisation/ou...

1 comments

Thank you, I’d certainly missed [3], I’ll try some of those.