Health bosses in Newham have admitted there is room for improvements in some services after a patient survey revealed disappointing results.

The survey, which was carried out by the Care Quality Commission, is based on responses from 265 outpatients who used services at Newham University Hospital NHS Trust.

The Trust was measured against other health authorities across England for a variety of indicators including waiting for an appointment, hospital environment and facilities and acknowledging patients.

Of the 48 areas on which the CQC asked questions, Newham scored Worse in half and About the Same in the remainder.

Len Richards, Chief Executive, said: “We recognise that Newham Hospital’s results in the outpatient department survey are disappointing and are concerned to hear that some patients are not having a good experience of our services.

“At the time this survey was conducted the Trust had recently completed a period of transformation that saw the total reconfiguration of outpatient appointment booking and general enquiries. Since the transformation each speciality has been assigned a POD, which deals with each patient’s journey from the first initial appointment to follow up appointments and any procedures that may be planned. We anticipate that these changes will see real improvements for Newham patients.

“However, we recognise that we have room for improvement in some areas, including communication with patients and waiting times on the day of appointment and are working hard to address these areas. We have recently launched our ‘You Matter’ programme, which aims to engage patients and staff in improving services for patients particularly focussing on communication and the patient experience.

“We are in the process of reviewing all of our outpatient services to identify where waiting times on the day of appointment are a particular problem. We always aim to keep patients informed of any delays when these occur and recognise that such delays can be frustrating for patients. We will be monitoring patients’ experience in our outpatient departments and we ask patients to continue to feed back to us their experience through surveys and comments cards so that we can continue to deliver improvements that make a difference.”