How valid are patients’ views of their care? Research from the British Consumers’ Association suggests that patients are capable of accurately assessing the quality offered by general practitioners (GPs).

Traditionally, patients are assumed to be incapable of forming any sort of informed judgement. That is why private operators often go big on bling. The operating assumption is that patients will view quality in terms of the thickness of the carpet.

It is also why public healthcare systems tend to be judged by external goals and targets, rather than by patient experience and feedback – although this is changing.

The Consumers’ Association sent three laymen to visit 30 GPs. Each presented in a way that should have led doctors to react and follow-up in a certain, specific way. For instance, one man told a GP that he “just wanted some sleeping pills”. Would the doctor probe to see if he was really suffering from depression?

In another case, a woman had high blood pressure while on contraceptive pills. Would the doctor make the connection?

The consultations were recorded and shown to an expert panel of doctors who were asked to judge quality. Worryingly, 12 out of the 30 were judged to be poor. There was a strong correlation between length of consultation and quality. In the case of the man asking for sleeping pills, a GP handed them over and completed the visit in three minutes.

Interestingly, the patients were also asked to assess their visits. In 11 out of the 12 cases which experts rated as poor, these laymen also marked the consultations as poor.

Obviously, this is not conclusive. These “patients” were laypeople, but they were making multiple visits, and so had a means of comparing them. Additionally, they were likely better educated and better communicators than most visitors to a GP.

Nonetheless, the research is worth thinking about. It would be particularly intriguing to see if a larger-scale trial would produce similar results.

Online rating sites in Germany, the Nordics and Eastern Europe show the way forward. Meanwhile, patients are becoming far more educated. The percentage of people going to university in the UK has risen from 6% in 1975 to nearly 50% today. The state will benefit greatly from greater patient involvement and ownership in healthcare.