How patients respond to FFT

How patients respond to FFT

Understanding the patient's side helps you answer their questions — and trust the anonymity story yourself.

The patient experience

  1. The patient receives an invitation by email or SMS with a personal link.
  2. The link opens a simple response page — no login, no app. It shows your service's name and introduction, and asks the standard NHS England question: "Overall, how was your experience of our service?" on a five-point scale from Very good to Very poor (plus "Don't know").
  3. They can optionally add a free-text comment (up to 4,000 characters).
  4. On submitting they see your thank-you message. The link is single-use — it can't be submitted twice.

If a link has expired, been used already, or the survey window has closed, the patient sees a friendly explanation rather than an error.

Anonymity — what patients are told, and what's true

The response page tells patients their feedback is anonymous — not linked back to them or their medical record. That's how it works: responses are stored separately from any patient identifiers, and staff triaging comments see the comment text only. This is also why staff notes in triage must never record who a commenter "probably" is.

The invitation footer is equally explicit about the one thing we *do* record per patient: that they responded, by which channel and how quickly — never what they said. That is what powers the channel insights panel, and patients are told so in every message, with a link to change their preferences. If a patient asks, the honest answer is: "we can see that you replied and how you got the message; we cannot see your rating or comment."

Why some patients don't get an invitation

  • They've opted out of contact — the opt-out list is always respected.
  • No usable contact detail was in the uploaded cohort for their preferred channel.
  • De-duplication — a patient seen twice in a period isn't invited twice.

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