Hospital Customer Service – March 2018 1

Shalinee Wickramasinghe – Regional Customer Service Manager (London & South East)

VOICE OF THE CUSTOMER

HISTOCOMPATIBILITY & IMMUNOGENETICS

CUSTOMER SURVEY 2018

CUSTOMER SERVICE

Hospital Customer Service – March 2018 2

Executive Summary

This report presents the results of a survey conducted between 4th and 22nd December 2017

with Histocompatibility & Immunogenetics (H&I), solid organ transplant customers.

This is a bespoke survey for key H&I customers whose feedback is not captured through the

quarterly NHSBT customer satisfaction survey.

The results of the survey show very strong support for the service.

100% of customers would recommend the laboratory services to a colleague.

96% of customers are satisfied that, the H&I laboratory will provide the results/reports

when they need them.

96% of customers agree that the H&I laboratory service readily provides professional

advice when needed.

96% of customers are satisfied with the quality of the professional advice that they

receive from the laboratory.

88% of customers are satisfied with the turnaround times.

67% of customers gave a top box satisfaction score (9 or 10) for the overall service

provided by H&I. With an overall average score of 9

The majority of suggested service improvements related to test turnaround times, report

format and report delivery. An action plan has been developed to target improvement in these

areas.

All comments received about the whole H&I laboratory service were extremely positive.

Hospital Customer Service – March 2018 3

Survey Methodology

The survey was issued in December 2017 to 80 customers in 16 hospitals, which consisted of

11 transplant units (one of which was cardiothoracic) and 6 referral units. The recipients

consisted of transplant coordinators, consultants, surgeons and nurses. The survey

population represented users of H&I’s solid organ service.

Customers were asked to rate 5 statements representing key aspects of the service on a

scale of ‘agree strongly’, ‘agree slightly’, ‘neither agree or disagree’, ‘disagree slightly’ and

‘disagree strongly’, with a ‘not applicable’ option. Statement 6 was rated on a scale of 1 to 10,

with 1 being ‘not at all satisfied’ and 10 ‘being completely satisfied’.

Customers were asked to state the nature of the services they used from a prepopulated

choice:

Renal transplantation

Cardiothoracic transplantation

Liver transplantation

Small bowel transplantation

Pancreas transplantation

Other

Consultant support

The survey sought a measure of customer loyalty by presenting a variation on the standard

Net Promoter Score question asking if customers would recommend the services to

colleagues, with a yes/no response rather than scaling.

Respondents were given the opportunity to provide free text comment to support qualitative

assessment of the results and to capture any areas for development or improvement.

Hospital Customer Service – March 2018 4

Survey Questions

Below is a list of questions used within the survey

Statement

Q1 I can trust the laboratory to provide results/reports when I need them

Q2 I am satisfied with the quality of professional advice that I receive from the laboratory

Q3 Professional advice is readily available from the service when needed

Q4 I am confident that urgent results will be promptly communicated to me or my cover

Q5 I am satisfied that required turnaround times for the service provision are met

Q6 How satisfied are you with the overall service that H&I provide in relation to solid

organ transplantation?

Q7 Would you recommend this laboratory service to a colleague?

Q8 How might the service be improved?

Q9 Please add any other comments you wish to make about the whole H&I laboratory

service

Hospital Customer Service – March 2018 5

Survey Results

From the 80 surveys issued, 27 responses were received representing the views of 11

hospitals. A return rate of 34% was achieved in relation to individuals surveyed and 69% for

hospitals. 80% of Transplant units responded and 50% of the referral units responded.

Statement

Q1 I can trust the laboratory to provide results/reports when I need them

Q2 I am satisfied with the quality of professional advice that I receive from the laboratory

Q3 Professional advice is readily available from the service when needed

Q4 I am confident that urgent results will be promptly communicated to me or my cover

Q5 I am satisfied that required turnaround times for the service provision are met

Service type No.

responses

No.

hospitals

% Strongly Agree

Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q5

Overall 27 11

Renal transplantation 21 10 90 100 76 76 57

Cardiothoracic

transplantation 5 1 80 60 60 60 60

Liver transplantation 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

Small bowel transplantation 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

Renal and Pancreas

transplantation 1 1 100 100 100 100 100

Other 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

Consultant support 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

Please note that it appears one of the respondees replies were contradictory as they gave poor responses to questions 1 to 5. However, they would recommend the service to colleagues and gave a score of 10 for overall satisfaction.

Hospital Customer Service – March 2018 6

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

Agree strongly Agree slightly Neither agreenor disagree

Disagree slightly Stronglydisagree

N/A

Responses to Questions 1 to 5

Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q5

78%

14%

2%

1%

2% 3%

Summary of Total Responses

Agree strongly

Agree slightly

Neither agree nor disagree

Disagree slightly

Strongly disagree

N/A

Renal transplantation

Of the total responses to questions 1 to 4, 100% of responses were either strongly or slightly agree.

Of the total responses to question 5, 90% of responses were either strongly or slightly agree. The remaining were neither positive nor negative.

Cardiothoracic transplantation

Of the total responses to question 1, 80% of responses strongly agree. The remaining response was remaining from the respondee whose replies were contradictory.

Of the total responses to questions 2 to 5, 60% of responses strongly agree. The remaining responses received consisted of not applicable and the contradictory responses.

Hospital Customer Service – March 2018 7

Statement

Q6 How satisfied are you with the overall service that H&I provide in relation to solid

organ transplantation?

Service type

No.

responses

No.

hospitals

No

Tx units

% scoring

9 or 10

Average

Score

Overall 27 11 12

Renal transplantation 21 10 10 57* 8.8

Cardiothoracic

transplantation 5 1 1 100 9.8

Liver transplantation 0 0 0 0 0

Small bowel transplantation 0 0 0 0 0

Renal and Pancreas

transplantation 1 1 1 100 9

Other 0 0 0 0 0

Consultant support (only) 0 0 0 0 0

It should be noted that some hospitals have more than one transplantation unit.

Hospital Customer Service – March 2018 8

4%

27%

34%

35%

Overall satisfaction for H&I Solid Organ Tx Services

7 8 9 10

* The graph below shows a further breakdown of responses to Q6 from the renal transplantation units.

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Score

Responses to Q6 from Renal Transplantation units

69% of customers gave a score of either 9 or 10.

The average score from our customers was 9.

Hospital Customer Service – March 2018 9

Replies covered a range of customers across England though some areas were not reflected in the returns.

NHSBT Centre Transplant Unit Referral Unit

Birmingham 2/3 0/2

Filton 0/1 0/0

Newcastle 2/2 3/3

Sheffield 3/3 0/0

Tooting 2/2 0/1

Customer Loyalty

Statement

Q7 Would you recommend this laboratory service to a colleague?

100% of respondents said they would recommend the laboratory to a colleague.

Hospital Customer Service – March 2018 10

Qualitative Responses

Statement

Q8 How might the service be improved?

Q9 Please add any other comments you wish to make about the whole H&I laboratory

service

NHSBT Centre

How might the service be improved? Comments about the whole H&I laboratory service

Birmingham It would be good if results could be reported in our lab system

Generally doing a good job!

Tooting I think NBS South Thames, provide an excellent service. It would be great if the virtual crossmatch tests could be turned around quicker, but our volume of tests has increased, which likely reflects the minor delay.

We appreciate Dr Deb Sage attending our Living Donor Planning meeting at least once per month to provide additional on-site advice.

Tooting Virtual cross match results can take some time to come back, sometimes up to 2 weeks. Can cause anxiety to donors & recipients. I would like the result to be available in under 1 week.

I find the H&I staff to be very approachable and helpful. I find them to be very supportive and give clear guidance on complex cases.

Tooting More intercalated working of laboratory and clinical staff which are in the process of developing new services

Tooting Arguably more availability over night for transplantation.

Tooting Not sure Excellent

Sheffield Currently communication of deceased donor cross match results is through coordinators. Suggest direct contact with consultants for difficult cross match

Sheffield The staff are superb and extremely efficient and professional, however, the turnaround time for results can be variable depending on workload and what would appear to be a shortage of resources (staff). Having access to a H&I Consultant on call for advice out of hours would enable additional opportunities to agree a virtual cross match and expedite the transplant process

Always extremely helpful with any requests.

Sheffield Improve turnaround times for DSAs

Very happy with the service we receive with the proviso in question 8

Sheffield Quicker turnaround times for LD XM and assessment, closer engagement in the DD long waiters

Hospital Customer Service – March 2018 11

Sheffield The only issue is the discrepancy of the HLA mismatches given by the ODT Hub centre at the time of organ offer and the final cross-match results given by the Tissue Typing lab, which invariably differ. This has impact on the immunosuppressive prescription of the recipient, which may be problematic on occasion, because of our immunosuppression protocol that varies with DR-mismatches.

Newcastle

(CT)

I am satisfied with service provided Professional, knowledgeable staff who are very responsive and helpful, I greatly appreciate service provided.

Newcastle

(CT)

Excellent team and very quick to respond

Newcastle

(CT)

The whole team are a pleasure to work with.

Newcastle Great service, above and beyond especially from Vaughan Carter

Newcastle More consistent reporting of potential live donor tissue typing reports - sometimes are told the match with the recipient, sometimes are not. Same for antibody screens

Generally excellent - Vaughan Carter's input and advice is invaluable and he should be recognised for this

Newcastle I would prefer to have little in the way of paper results and am not sure that there is a satisfactory IT solution for this yet.

We are very grateful to our colleagues there!

Newcastle We receive excellent service from H&I Newcastle, if there any results I am unclear I have always found the team to be extremely helpful if I have to contact by phone or email for further explanation.

The majority of suggested service improvements related to test turnaround times, report

format and report delivery.

All comments received about the whole H&I laboratory service were extremely positive.

Hospital Customer Service – March 2018 12

Improvement Action Plan

Improvement Action Plan

Aspect Action Who NHSBT

Centre

When

Results- live donor and virtual cross match

H&I to review turnaround times (trt) for live donor work up and virtual cross matching

H&I National Q1

2018/2019

Results- less paperwork

Head of laboratory (HoL) to discuss options of electronic reporting with customer

H&I Newcastle/ Birmingham

Q1 2018/2019

Results – to provide consistent reports

Contact customer to discuss reporting format

H&I Newcastle Q1

2018/2019

On call query NHSBT H&I to communicate out of hours arrangements.

H&I National Q1

2018/2019

Discrepancy of the HLA mismatches given by the ODT Hub centre at the time of organ offer and the final cross-match results

Contact customer to understand their concerns

H&I

Sheffield

Q1 2018/2019

Results – communication of deceased donor cross match results

Contact customer to understand their concerns

H&I Sheffield Q1

2018/2019

The actions above will be managed via H&I Senior Management Team.