Hospitals please patients but can improve

A general view of University College Hospital in London, November 19, 2006. Most English hospital patients are pleased with their care, but hospitals still have room to improve by speeding up treatment and providing more single-sex wards, the government's health watchdog said on Wednesday.

LONDON (Reuters) - Most hospital patients are pleased with their care, but hospitals still have room to improve by speeding up treatment and providing more single-sex wards, the government's health watchdog said on Wednesday.

More than nine out of ten patients described their care as either "excellent", "very good" or "good" in an annual survey carried out for the Healthcare Commission. Only two percent rated their care as "poor".

The watchdog described the response, similar to last year's result, as a "vote of confidence" by patients in the care provided. But it also said there was room to improve.

"Patients have the right to expect all hospitals to get the basics right, like offering help with eating and answering calls for assistance," Healthcare Commission Chief Executive Anna Walker said in a statement.

"Looking at waiting times, trusts need to improve the patient's journey through all parts of the hospital, from arriving at A&E to discharge," she said. "It is also clear that for a significant minority of patients the NHS is performing below standards on segregated accommodation," she said.

The study, one of the largest of its kind in the world, was completed by more than 80,000 patients at hospitals in England during autumn 2006.

Some 93 percent said their room or ward was "very clean" or "fairly clean", while 84 percent said they had waited six months or less for planned admissions.

But there were 30 hospital trusts where one in five patients said their food was "poor".

Among patients who said they needed help eating, 20 percent said they did not get enough food.

There was a small increase in the proportion of patients -- to 15 percent -- reporting they had to wait longer than five minutes for help after pressing their call button.

On the sensitive topic of mixed wards, a quarter of patients said they shared a sleeping area with members of the opposite sex on first admission.

Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt said NHS staff should take pride from the survey's findings.

"This is the public's real verdict on the state of our NHS today," she said. "It is heartening to see that, contrary to what critics of the NHS say, the overwhelming majority of patients are happy."