Healthwatch – The Collapse and the Future of the Patient Voice 

For over a decade, Healthwatch services have acted as independent champions for patients, carers, and communities – particularly those who are vulnerable or face barriers to accessing care. As a statutory intendent body, Healthwatch’s status allowed them to challenge poor practice, conduct impartial research, and voice people’s opinions without fear or bias. 

However, recent government policy shifts and the emergence of a new “Neighbourhood Health Framework” have signalled what many are calling the “collapse” of Healthwatch as we know it. As the organisation is absorbed or phased out in favour of internal government departments, we must ask: How will the patient voice be heard?

What Does Healthwatch Currently Do?

A recent analysis by The King’s Fund over the role Healthwatch has played in shaping Health and Social care structures highlights a concept known as “unknown unknowns.” [1] Meaning, in any widespread system like the NHS, leaders often “don’t know what they don’t know,” creating a gap in understanding what patients and carers need from leaders. Whilst leaders may have data on waiting times and budgets, they often lack the “ground-truth” of the patient experience and first-hand encounters. Healthwatch specialises in finding and filling these gaps. Ranging from pointing out that a new digital booking system was accidentally excluding elderly patients or highlighting a breakdown in maternity safety, Healthwatch provides an independent early warning system. 

Healthwatch’s core functions include:

• Amplifying Patient Voices: Healthwatch gathers feedback from individuals, families, and communities about their experiences of health and social care services, including GP practices, hospital visits, and occupational therapies. Through this, collecting feedback on systematic issues affecting individuals.
• Holding Services Accountable: As Healthwatch is equipped with statutory powers, they can challenge providers, make recommendations and suggestions for improvement, and advocate for patient’s voices, including with Integrated Care Boards (ICBs) and local authorities.
• Bridging The Gap: Healthwatch operates as a bridge between patients and the complex healthcare system, providing essential information, advice, and signposting to help people navigate their care pathways and understand their rights.

This function is now moving “in-house” (under the Department of Health and Social Care) with patient feedback largely driven through digital platforms like the NHS App and a new National Director of Patient Experience within the Department of Health and Social Care. 

Learnings from the Healthwatch Model

With Healthwatch being disbanded, there are key findings to implement in further feedback platforms and organisations. These include:

• Independent Status – A key success of Healthwatch’s work was its role as an independent body, enabling open and truthful feedback from patients, communities, and carers. Acting in partnership with Health and Social Care services, Healthwatch accessed hard-to-reach communities to identify health inequalities within local communities for service improvements. Access to local people and communities was ensured through independent status, separating feedback from internal mechanisms. Further bodies will expect to act as independent bodies to prevent biases in feedback collections.
• Hub and Spoke Model – the localised and national model provided space for feedback to be collected locally and nationally to spot trends across different areas, helping identify health inequalities and develop localised support models. Collecting feedback locally will be essential for the introduction of the “Neighbourhood Health Framework” to assess the impact of moving health and social services into a community-based system of services.
• Limited Statuary Power – Collecting feedback is core to developing services, identifying necessary changes and requirements of local and national people. However, with limited power to enact change, Healthwatch was limited to the impact their feedback would cause within systems. Integrating feedback into Health and Social care systems will allow change to be enacted, with feedback services having the power to make service improvements. 

The Future of Feedback

• The Voluntary, Community and Social Enterprise (VCSE) Sector: Voluntary and community organisations may be asked to step-up to collect patient feedback within a community-based support setting, as support transitions into the local community as independent bodies. However, VCSE’s often lack the statutory “right to enter” that Healthwatch possessed, acting without the authority or support of the wider government and NHS systems. Moving forward, VCSE support will need to overcome this barrier to access the hard-to-reach communities previously supported by Healthwatch, providing a third-party feedback mechanism for people to share their voices transparently.
• Digital “Real-Time” Feedback: A move toward apps and instant surveys through NHS Apps will be used to capture large volumes of feedback efficiently from patients and carers. However, digital feedback is often inaccessible to vulnerable elderly individuals or people living in digital poverty, meaning feedback cannot be collected from diverse pools of individuals. Diverse feedback is essential to assessing health inequalities on a local and national basis, meaning inaccessible feedback format may influence findings on health inequalities and plans to support hard to reach communities. Fighting digital poverty and providing resources for digital literacy will need to work hand-in-hand with digital feedback routes to secure comprehensive feedback, especially for older patients who lack technological access.
• Internal Patient Panels: ICBs are creating their own advisory groups within their organisations to keep feedback in-house and community-based, directly reflecting the support services provided by the ICB. However, these groups lack the independent identity of Healthwatch, questioning their impartialness and critics suggesting groups will simply create an “echo chamber” of support rather than a challenge. Remaining impartial will be key to the success of ICB panels, centring the patient at the heart of all feedback to prevent any internal influences.
• National NHS Goals, Objectives and Metrics: The Neighbourhood Health Framework sets out 5 goals for improving the system, including Goal 5 of improving patient and staff satisfaction [2]. National metrics will be developed in 2026-2027 to reflect this goal including “patient-reported experience measures and patient-reported outcome measures” with ICBs setting local goals. Outcomes will be led by the local people, with services developed in-line with local needs. These goals will include national and local outcome measuring, however, how these metrics will be collected is still in development at the time of writing.

What Can Providers Do?

With the disbanding of Healthwatch, collecting the patient voice will be essential to understanding service development and improvement for all health and social care services. Service providers will need to step-up to fill the void left behind by Healthwatch to continue to collect service users’ voices and opinions of local and national services, including health inequality trends, accessibility of services, and patient satisfaction with services. Collecting feedback and lived experience will be essential to the ongoing development of Health and Social care services, especially with the transition to “Neighbourhood Health Framework” targeted to reduce health inequalities through placing care as close to home as possible in the local community. 

Offering diverse feedback mechanisms will be essential to remaining an innovative service, reflective of the user’s needs. Utilising a range of feedback channels such as in-person discussions with patients and carers, scrutiny groups, feedback forums, satisfaction and improvement surveys, suggestions boxes, QR code-based feedback forms, and digital app-based direct comments to organisation, enables the development of services in-line with patient voices.

Feedback mechanisms will need to adapt and innovate as services evolve in-line with the NHS’s 10 Year Plan, bridging the gap between technological in-house methods and in-person qualitative data from lived experiences of patients and carers. Amidst the changing landscape of Health and Social care, patient feedback is at the forefront of progression and service improvements with concerns for patient and carer feedback growing in prevalence amongst tendering opportunities, reflecting the government’s concerns. Capturing the patient and carer’s voice should be a high priority action for all providers to ensure they are ready to step-up and fill the gap left behind once Healthwatch is disbanded. 

How Can Your Tender Team Help?

See our Full Tender Write and Review & Evaluation pages for more information on how our award winning team can support with your bid

The disbanding of Healthwatch and the ongoing focus on digitalisation represents a wider shift of changes and opportunities for care providers. Local authorities and the NHS are looking to partner with providers who remain aware of these changes and innovations, especially focusing on introducing innovative ways of working to collect patient and carer feedback across their services.

At Your Tender Team, we remain at the cutting edge of innovation and change, allowing us to better support you with your bids. We will share our findings and case studies for ideas of implementing changes within your business to collect feedback through creative and transparent channels to fill any gaps in knowledge about your services. We will also work with you to showcase your ideas for stepping-in to fill the gap left behind by the disbanding of Healthwatch, using evidence of your systems and suggestions to drive positive changes within your service.

[1] The Kings Fund – ‘Healthwatch, “unknown unknowns”, and the value of a friend who tells you the truth’ https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/insight-and-analysis/blogs/healthwatch-unknown-unknowns-value-of-a-friend-who-tells-you-the-truth (published 31 March 2026)

[2] Gov.UK – ‘Neighbourhood Health Framework’ https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/neighbourhood-health-framework/neighbourhood-health-framework (published 17 March 2026)