The Friends and Family Test (FFT)
It asks people if they would recommend the services they have used and offers a range of responses. When combined with supplementary follow-up questions, the FFT provides a mechanism to highlight both good and poor patient experience.
Launched in April 2013, the FFT question has been asked in all NHS inpatient and A&E departments across England and, since October 2013, all providers of NHS funded maternity services. In its first year, more than 2 million individual responses were given.
The FFT is now being rolled out to an extra seven areas of NHS care making the opportunity to leave feedback possible in almost all NHS services.
From 1 December 2014, the FFT will be available in GP practices, from January 2015 in mental health and community services and from 1 April 2015, it will be expanded to NHS dental practices, ambulance services, patient transport services, acute hospitals outpatients and day cases.
The feedback gathered through the FFT is intended to be used in NHS organisations across the country to stimulate local improvement and empower staff to carry out the sorts of changes that make a real difference to patients and their care.
While the results will not be statistically comparable against other organisations because of the various data collection methods, it will provide a broad measure of patient experience that can be used alongside other data to inform service improvement and patient choice.
Publishing results of the Friends and Family Test
The results of the FFT are published at monthly intervals on both NHS England and NHS Choices websites.
The Friends and Family Test for staff
From 1 April 2014, all NHS trusts providing acute, community, ambulance and mental health services in England were required to implement the FFT for staff.
