The Future of Patient Voice – The King’s Fund Report

News - 20 March 2026

The King’s Fund logo, featured in a post about the importance of an independent patient voice highlighted by Healthwatch Wirral.

Healthwatch Wirral welcomes the King’s Fund report highlighting the importance of independent voice

Earlier this week, The King’s Fund’s insightful report, The Future of Patient Voice: Learning from the Healthwatch Model, reviewed the national Healthwatch model and identified how local Healthwatch organisations contribute to shaping health and social care.

To view the full report, click here for the King’s Fund website.

The report, part‑funded by Healthwatch England but independently researched and authored by The King’s Fund, draws on workshops and interviews with a wide range of stakeholders including local Healthwatch teams, NHS England, the CQC, voluntary organisations, and other patient‑experience bodies.

Key findings welcomed by Healthwatch Wirral

Healthwatch Wirral welcomes many parts of the report, including its recognition of:

1.The value of Healthwatch’s independence, with the ability to reflect people’s experiences without pressure from organisational interest.

Healthwatch’s independence has ensured it’s been seen as credible by communities and allowed scrutiny of issues the health and care system may overlook… to provide objective, impartial and trusted advice and guidance to help people navigate the health and social care system and understand their rights.

2.The strength of the hub‑and‑spoke model (Healthwatch England and local Healthwatch), creating a clear upward flow of insight into national priorities.

Successfully combined local reach with national influence, allowing insight from communities to shape policy debates.

3.The breadth and quality of evidence collected, blending both quantitative and qualitative insight across health and social care.

This has helped the health and care system capture emerging issues that mattered to patients, service users and local communities.

Considerations for the Future

The King’s Fund presents several system‑level considerations, including the need to:

  • Maintain a public voice independent of government and services so that services are not ‘marking their own homework’.
  • Gather unsolicited, varied and rich community insight, including from seldom heard groups.
  • Ensure patient and public voice is central to how services are both commissioned and provided.
  • Enhance – not weaken – the system’s capacity to hear, understand and respond to people’s experiences.
  • Maintain a hub and spoke architecture for any future model, but there should be clarity on how this aligns more deliberately to local government, new ICB clusters and neighbourhood structures and footprints.

Response from Healthwatch Wirral’s CEO

Healthwatch Wirral’s independence has been the cornerstone of its credibility and its ability to speak truths on behalf of communities, especially those who feel like they aren’t being heard or don’t know where to go for help. As people’s confidence and feeling of safety declines in their health and care, the need for an unbiased, trusted voice has never been greater. In Wirral, we see day to day how important it is that people’s experience shape how our services are designed and implemented, and it is vital that any future changes strengthen, not dilute, the role of Healthwatch as the independent voice.

Independent Voice Going Forwards

Healthwatch Wirral’s statutory independence allows it to act without fear or favour, challenge poor practice, highlight good practice, and expose system failings without being constrained by internal priorities. Independence has also enabled Healthwatch Wirral to build strong relationships with communities, gather meaningful feedback, and shine a light on how health and social care services are working for patients and service users.

If gathering public feedback becomes the responsibility of the NHS for our health-related functions and to Local Authorities for social care-related functions, it is open to interpretation by Providers without independent scrutiny or accountability. Following research by Healthwatch organisations, there is a significant level of digital exclusion, as well as apathy, and therefore there is risk that this undermines public confidence and the prevention of people speaking up at all.

The King’s Fund report identifies that local Healthwatch has been more impactful than previous iterations of patient voice functions and argues that independence from government needs to be preserved if it is to retain public trust.

National Support

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath has shown his support for Healthwatch, commenting:

Governments of all colours have recognised the importance of independence in patient voice for over fifty years. Providers of health and social care need to know what patients and service users feel about the care they receive, including things that are sometimes uncomfortable to hear. However genuine Ministers are in encouraging health and social care bodies to monitor patients’ experience themselves, it is vital that service users can always be confident there is also an independent body that can speak up on their behalf, without fear or favour. Along with colleagues in both Houses of Parliament I will be working to ensure that this principle is not lost when the forthcoming Health Reform Bill is debated.