Public opinion

The NHS Choices website was launched in 2007. In November 2010 it launched a service supposedly allowing practices to edit their own key information, such as opening times and acceptance policy of new patients. The ability to do this editing was conferred by the PCTs but few managed the difficult task of giving these editing rights to practices, and currently in my cluster some two years on no practices can do this.

As a member of GDPC Executive I had the ‘pleasure’ at that time of meeting representatives of Capita, the company employed by the Department of Health to manage the website. It was perhaps a sign of getting old but I felt uneasy on many levels about an attempt to create a ‘trip advisor’ site for NHS dentistry. Many of the concerns we raised then, regarding malicious anonymous postings being potentially commercially damaging, were down played as something that would not happen as the site was well moderated. Don’t you hate it when someone says I told you so?