Friends and Family Test

The Friends and Family Test (FFT) programme, owned by NHS England and NHS Improvement (NHSEI), gives patients and staff the opportunity to submit feedback to local providers of NHS funded services, using a simple question which asks how likely they are to recommend the service to their friends and family.  Data is collated and used locally by providers but an aggregate extract of counts is also submitted centrally to NHS Digital for onward sharing with NHSEI. 

The FFT is used in a number of settings:

• acute (emergency, inpatient, maternity, outpatient services)
• ambulance
• community
• long COVID assessment clinics
• mental health.

While predominantly aimed at patients and their friends and families, there is one element of the FFT collection which allows staff to also provide feedback.

This Notice is served on:

• acute trusts
• ambulance trusts
• care trusts
• community trusts
• mental health trusts
• voluntary and independent sector providers.

The collection of FFT data started in April 2013 with the change of platform to NHS Digital taking place in November 2017. The collection is ongoing, with aggregate counts being collected:

on a monthly basis for:

• Accident and Emergency
• Ambulance
• Community Health
• In-patients
• Mental Health
• Outpatients

and on a quarterly basis for:

• National Quarterly Pulse Survey (Staff)
• Long COVID Assessment Clinics.

Update: 17 September 2021: This "combination" Notice replaces the individual Notices for each component of the FFT which were previously published in 2017 (at the point of transfer of the FFT collection platform to NHS Digital). In addition, this DPN notes the addition of a new component, for Long COVID clinic settings.