The NHS Friends and Family test (FFT) is an important opportunity for you to provide feedback on the services that provide your care and treatment. Your feedback will help NHS England to improve services for everyone.

It was introduced in 2013 and asks patients whether they would recommend hospital wards, A&E departments and maternity services to their friends and family if they needed similar care or treatment. This means every patient in these wards and departments is able to give quick feedback on the quality of the care they receive, giving hospitals a better understanding of the needs of their patients and enabling improvements.

The FFT became available in GP practices on December 1 2014. After years of completing paper questionnaires, we have now opted to send FFT invitations via text message.

Patients who attend for an appointment, and have a mobile number on their record, will receive a message approximately two hours following their appointment, asking them if they would like to complete the Friends and Family Test. To avoid sending any given patient too many FFT messages, there is a maximum limit of one per month.