This past December, Chris Quigley found himself laid up in King’s College Hospital, London. Flat on his back and with plenty of time to think, he realized that many things about his care could be better.
He wasn’t complaining, but did see opportunities for improvement. Unlike most hospital patients, he didn’t just say something to hospital staff, or fill out a suggestion card. Chris decided to get the community involved. With a laptop and WiFi access at his hospital bed, he created a Web site called Help Us Improve Kings The site uses a platform called DelibDialogueApp, from a company he founded.
From the Home page:
Help us improve King’s College Hospital!
If you’ve got an idea – add it! Or look around and rate / comment on other people ideas!
This site’s been set up to enable patients, employees, and visitors (family/friends of patients) to help share ideas of how to improve King’s College Hospital.
King’s is undoubtedly a great hospital doing great work – however all organisations can improve, and the best people to help King’s to improve is US – the people who interact with King’s on a daily basis.
He also shot this video and posted it on YouTube:
Now to be honest, after an initial flurry of activity, the conversation has stopped. About a dozen suggestions were submitted and most had only a few comments. There’s been no discussion since January in spite of coverage from Wired and the BBC. That’s the nature of Web 2.0 tools. Quick to create and easy to launch, many will fade away but some will take off.
But here’s the question to consider – How would your hospital react if one of your patients did this?
UPDATE – Garrick pointed me to an impressive site from BJC HealthCare called Make Medicine Better.
Check out the Share Your Ideas section for active and frank discussions on efficient care, expensive ER visits, CT Scan risks , health reform, and many more.
This is how it should be done.