PEOPLE in Bury have responded in their thousands to the launch of a public rating service for health and social care systems.

Bury LINk is the first patient network in the country to sponsor an initiative which allows people to go online to rate a service.

Many more internet users have visited the site on burylink.org to look at the views to help influence their own choice.

Mr Falah Al-Khafaji, the owner of Rate Our Services Ltd, said: “We received 31,560 visitors to the site in the first week and appeared on local radio and TV. And 13 per cent of visitors then decided to leave an opinion. And so, in just seven days we had 4,115 ratings, an average of nearly 588 people a day.

“It’s amazing. Bury LINk set us a target of 1,000 so we have really outdone ourselves.”

Mick Ainsworth, Bury LINk board director, commented “We thought people would be interested to see our early figures on user satisfaction with Bury health and social care services.

“Much of the patient experience we heard of previously was anecdotal and negative. Service users have shown us how much they value cleanliness, politeness and, above all, patient centred care. It looks like our pharmacists are leading the way in customer service in our residents’ opinion.”

Health and social care leaders in the borough have received their first performance report using data on the system. And Bury LINk’s chairman is eager to receive feedback from them on his board’s recommendations for action.

Commenting on the report, Mr Paul Mainwaring said: “We have suggested that the commissioners include a range of our performance indicators in their contract monitoring and we have also shared anonymised comments from real users.”