Dr Foster Health publishes Questions to Ask Your Consultant series

The first in Dr Foster Health's quarterly feature series, Questions to Ask Your Consultant, will reveal the best questions healthcare consumers can ask a hospital consultant to improve their own understanding of a particular medical condition and what will happen to them in hospital.

When someone is referred to a hospital consultant, there's likely to be a number of questions about what will happen in hospital, some of which the GP may not have had the time to answer or one simply forgets to ask. How can patients, their friends and family get the most out of consultant appointments?

Dr Foster Health's Questions to Ask Your Consultant series offers UK healthcare patients guidance on what questions to ask hospital consultants in order to better understand their illness or operation, or simply what to expect in hospital; questions such as:

- "How experienced is my consultant?"
- "Who will look after me in hospital?"
- "What medication will I need to take?"
- "How long will it take to recover?"
- "What aftercare will I receive?"

Dr Foster Health's Questions to Ask Your Consultant series demystifies some of the commonest surgical and medical treatments and describes patient pathways through the hospital system.

The Questions to Ask Your Consultant series also explains what consultants do and helps patients to get the most out of their healthcare experience within NHS and private hospitals.
The series features the following high volume medical specialties:

- Cardiology.
- Dermatology.
- Orthopaedics.
- Ophthalmology.
- Gynaecology.

To access the Questions to Ask Your Consultant feature series, visit Dr Foster Health. There is no registration or sign up and the service is free.
Dr Foster Health also reveals:

- Data on consultants in patients' local area
- Inpatient and outpatient waiting times at NHS hospitals across England
- How long someone can expect to stay in hospital for a given procedure
- Readmission rates for specific operations
- MRSA and C difficile infection rates
- Hospital Standardised Mortality Ratios (HSMRs)

Dr Foster Health can assist with patient pathways and informs patients what to expect during the consultation and what the recovery process is like.

Details about hospital consultants by area can be found by visiting Dr Foster Health's Consultant Guide.

Dr Foster Health is the leading innovator in benchmarking public services and communicating information about these services to the public. Dr Foster Health produces authoritative and independent guides to health services in the public and private sectors. We aim not only to inform, but also to act as a catalyst for change.