Hospital website to be open and transparent

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A NEW website has been launched giving information about the range of services at Warrington and Halton General hospitals.
The site – www.whh.nhs.uk – will openly publish a range of quality and service information to patients and visitors, according to the hospital Trust.
Among its features is a new transparency section where the hospital trust is openly publishing a range of quality and safety information about the hospitals with monthly updated data on incidents, infection and mortality rates, staffing levels on the wards and patient feedback.
An A-Z service directory also provides information on many of the trust’s different services at Warrington Hospital, Halton General, The Cheshire and Merseyside Treatment Centre and in the community so patients can find out about them before they come to hospital. About 64 services are already published and more are being added every week.
There are also patient and visitor guides to different aspects of attending hospitals, downloadable maps and site plans and online forms for changing outpatient appointments.
Around 16,000 unique visitors access information on the hospital website every month.
The launch of the website and the transparency section coincides with a national launch of ward staffing level and other safety information in the NHS which is being published by every NHS hospital trust in the country for the first time.
As well as publishing ward staffing information and incident data on their new website, the trust is also making it available on the wards. New “how are we doing?” boards are being put in place on every ward at the hospitals for patients and visitors to see daily information about the ward they are visiting.
Karen Dawber, director of nursing and organisational development, said:
“There is a national drive to increase the availability of data in the NHS on a range of indicators, in particular quality. The information is often in lots of different places so we have tried to make that openly available on our own website along with clear descriptions of what the data means and how we use it. Rather than going to a range of different sources, you can view information published about us by national organisations, as well as our own information, in one place.
“We use the data to drive the improvement seen in the hospitals and we feel it is important that our patients, visitors and staff can access it so they can judge how we are performing. Alongside that we’re making more and more service information and in depth articles available so that people can find out more about the services and staff that they may be referred to at the trust. We want to make it a one stop place where people can access everything they need to about the hospitals.”


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Experienced journalist for more than 40 years. Managing Director of magazine publishing group with three in-house titles and on-line daily newspaper for Warrington. Experienced writer, photographer, PR consultant and media expert having written for local, regional and national newspapers. Specialties: PR, media, social networking, photographer, networking, advertising, sales, media crisis management. Chair of Warrington Healthwatch Director Warrington Chamber of Commerce Patron Tim Parry Johnathan Ball Foundation for Peace. Trustee Warrington Disability Partnership. Former Chairman of Warrington Town FC.

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