Pharmacy Customer Service – NHS Choices

From this month, patients will be able to leave anonymous feedback on their experience of customer service at a particular pharmacy through the NHS Choices web site. Patients have been able to leave such feedback for doctors since 2009 and for dentists since 2010. “Comment administrators” (see below) will receive an e-mail advising them that comments have been left, which can (and should!) be replied to

Such comments will already have been moderated by NHS choices before posting to avoid anything extreme appearing. Nonetheless I suggest that it is important that pharmacists become comment administrators and exercise their right of reply to comments left, as not only the person that left the comment sees the reply but also members of the general public will be able to view comments and feedback if they click on the “patient feedback” tag

In fact for those who have not yet done so, it is a good pharmacy marketing opportunity, for pharmacists NOW to take control of their own pharmacy profile on the NHS Choices web site by applying to your PCT for “editing rights” as well as “Comment administrator rights”. Once the editing rights are registered to you, you will upon logging in, be lead to an administrative screen, which shows over which parts of your NHS Choices profile you have editing rights, and you will be able to see and reply to comments left.

Don’t forget that there are certain changes, like pharmacy name or address, or pharmacy opening hours where the PCT must have been given appropriate advance notice and/or given their permission before any change at all can be made

You can insert a hyperlink from your NHS Choices entry to the Pharmacy web site, which is worth doing for pharmacy marketing purposes

The PSNC August 2011 Newsletter gives more detailed guidance on the above subjects