 Publications
Maternity Services Survey 2017
In January, we started off
the year with the publication of the results of the 2017 Maternity Services Survey. In total, we received responses from
18,426 women who gave birth in January and February last year. Overall, we
found that women had positive perceptions of their maternity care, and that,
nationally speaking, there were small improvements in results for almost every
question in comparison to the maternity survey carried out in 2015. The
statistical release for the survey can be downloaded here.
Adult Inpatient Survey 2017
On Wednesday 13 June, we
published the results
of the 2017 Adult Inpatient Survey.
Among other findings, we found that, in comparison to previous survey, there
were improvements for perceptions of care provided by nurses and doctors. For
example, 78% of patients reported that they always had confidence in nurses
during their time in hospital—up 1% from last year and 6% from 2009. However,
results were roughly the same as previous surveys for areas of patient
experience such as noise at night on wards, information on newly prescribed
medicines, and information about care after leaving the hospital. Another key
finding was that, in line with previous inpatient surveys, patients with mental
health conditions consistently reported less positive experiences when in
hospital for physical conditions. These findings also echo the results of both the
2016 Emergency Department Survey and the 2016 Children and Young People’s
Survey.
The sub-group analysis that
is now a standard part of ‘Statistical Release’ publications (and can be found
at the back of the report)
also revealed younger patients (aged 16-35) and patients with Dementia or
Alzheimer’s on average reported poorer experiences of their time as an
Inpatient.
The 2017 survey was the 14th
of its kind: the first survey of adult inpatients was carried out in 2004 and this
group of patients have been surveyed in every year since. Inquisitive
researchers can access anonymised survey data for each year at the UK
Data Service.
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Publications using NHS patient survey data
A number of interesting recent
articles have featured analyses of data from NHS Patient Survey Programme.
Children and young
people’s versus parents’ responses in an English national inpatient survey was published in the Archives of Disease in Childhood in
February. In it, Dougal Hargreaves and his colleague’s analysed data from the
Children and Young People’s Inpatient and Day Case Survey 2014. They found that
children and young people’s perceptions of their care and parents’ perceptions
of their child’s care were different in some areas. For example, children were less
likely than their parents to report that they felt safe, were involved in
decisions, or that they had enough privacy during their time in hospital.
Steve Sizmur, of Picker, and
Veena Raleigh, of the King’s Fund, analysed data from the Adult Inpatient
Survey 2016 in their report The risks to care
quality and staff wellbeing of an NHS system under pressure, published in January. Among other findings, Steve and
Veena found that mean trust scores for many questionnaire items (for example,
“Overall, did you feel you were treated with respect and dignity while you were
in the hospital?") were negatively correlated with bed occupancy rates and
positively correlated with nurses per bed. In addition, their analysis showed
that, in many areas, staff perceptions of standards of care strongly predicted
patient perceptions.
 Survey programme strategy 2018 - 2021
Over the next few years, we
will begin to make some changes to the survey programme. We are starting to
explore the potential to move towards mixed-method delivery of questionnaires (using
online questionnaires as well as paper-based surveys). We believe that moving
in this direction will help us to increase the value and impact of the
programme by, for example, allowing us to review the frequency of surveys,
potentially increase samples sizes, and increase the range of services that are
included within the programme. Experimental pilots will continue to take place alongside
surveys to ensure prospective methods maintain data quality and yield their
anticipated benefits. If you would like to share ideas or discuss aspects of
this approach we would love to hear from you.
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 2017 Inpatient pilot results
Alongside the 2017 inpatient
survey, we piloted three interventions in a bid to boost future survey response
rates: an SMS reminder, a faster postal reminder, and a combination of both. We
found that faster postal reminders were most successful in boosting response
rates. We will be seeking to implement faster postal reminders in 2018, pending
ethical approval. This would be a small change to how the Adult Inpatient
Survey is conducted, but we would very much welcome feedback on the proposed
change.
Forthcoming pilots
We will be running three pilot
interventions alongside the 2018 Inpatient Survey intended to boost response
rates. Specifically, we will be exploring the effect of ‘push-to-web’ methods,
which will involve an SMS or postal invitation to a short web questionnaire, and
a shorter paper questionnaire. We have invited a number of trusts to
participate in the pilot and we welcome feedback at this early stage.
In recent pilots of redesigned questionnaires and covering letters, we
had some success in boosting response rates for the Community Mental Health
Survey. Specifically, these interventions increased the response rate by 4%. In
an attempt to increase the response rate even further, we are running another
pilot study alongside the 2018 Community Mental Health Survey. We are testing
four interventions: (1) a shorter
questionnaire (with about half as many questions as the main survey),
(2) an online shorter questionnaire with an SMS invitation, (3) SMS reminders
for the paper questionnaire, and (4) a paper questionnaire without a CQC flyer.
We will report on the findings of those pilots early next year.
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Engagement
In March, at the local
Healthwatch advisory conference in Bristol, the survey team presented on the
NHS Patient Survey Programme and discussed how local Healthwatch members might
use the results of national patient surveys in their work. We were interested
to learn about some of the questionnaires that local Healthwatch volunteers have
developed for local studies of patient experience. We would like to thank all
who attended for their feedback and engaging discussion of the survey programme,
and would welcome further opportunities to discuss the survey programme and the
data that it generates with other organisations.
National Data Opt-out Programme
The national data opt-out
service was launched on the 25 May 2018. The new service allows individuals to
withhold their confidential patient information from use in research and
planning (for more information click here). The NHS Patient Survey Programme is presently exempt
from the opt-out scheme and, as such, for forthcoming surveys, trusts should not exclude patients who have opted-out
through the new national data opt-out service.
 Surveys in fieldwork and upcoming surveys
We have two surveys currently in fieldwork — the 2018 community mental health and maternity surveys — and two surveys for which fieldwork will begin later this year — the 2018 inpatient and urgent and emergency care surveys. Key dates for all four surveys are below:
Community Mental Health 2018:
Fieldwork - February to June 2018
Publication - December 2018
Maternity 2018:
Fieldwork - April to August 2018
Publication - January 2019
Inpatient 2018:
Trust Webinar - June 2018
Trusts Draw Sample - 1st August 2018
Fieldwork - August 2018 to January 2019
Publication - May 2019
Urgent and Emergency Care 2018:
Publication of Instruction manuals and posters - August 2018
Trust Webinar - September 2018
Trusts Draw Sample - October 2018
Fieldwork - October 2018 to March 2019
Publication - Late Summer 2019
This is a summary of what we’ve been doing for the past few months. In the next issue we can reveal the success of the latest Community Mental Health pilots. If
you have any ideas for new items you would like us to cover in this newsletter we would love to
hear about them. We would
particularly like to hear about any work you are doing with Patient Survey Data
that we could feature here.
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