Surveys planned for 2021
In 2021 five surveys will run as part of the Programme:
-
2020 Urgent & Emergency Care (UEC) Survey (all trusts are currently in field)
-
2020 Inpatient Survey
-
2020 Children and Young People’s Survey
-
2021 Community Mental Health Survey
- 2021 Maternity Survey
For full details, please see the survey programme which sets out dates for future surveys, and expected publication dates.
|
COVID-19 Impact
The Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has put unprecedented pressure on health and social care services. Across the NHS Patient Survey Programme, we have adapted the surveys to reflect changes in NHS care practices, processes and emerging priorities in care or patient experience driven by the pandemic. We have also taken measures to allow our surveys to look at the experiences of people with COVID-19, or suspected of having COVID-19, when they use NHS services.
For example, across all of the surveys in field we have assessed the questionnaires to ensure that questions are still relevant and focus on current circumstances. In some cases, we are adding new questions or collecting different variables. When we have spoken with colleagues from participating trusts, we have been reassured by their continued enthusiasm for collecting patient experience data at this unique time, however if you require any additional support with participating, please do get in touch.
Recent survey publications
Since the summer newsletter, we have published findings from two surveys.
Findings from the Coronavirus (COVID-19) Inpatient Survey were published on the 18th November 2020. The survey looked at experiences of people staying in NHS hospitals during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. We found that most people were positive about the care and treatment they received.
Positive findings:
- Most patients said they felt safe from the risk of catching coronavirus in hospital
- The majority of patients said that their room or ward was ‘very clean’
- Most also recalled seeing a range of infection control measures. This included staff wearing personal protective equipment (PPE), handwashing, and cleaning of surfaces
- Fewer people saw social distancing measures such as markers on the floor or signage
-
Those diagnosed with coronavirus had poorer experiences than those without the virus –particularly in relation to discharge from hospital and knowing what would happen next with their care
-
The results also reveal some concerns that certain groups found some aspects of their hospital stay more difficult, such as, people with dementia or Alzheimer’s and those with a mental health condition.
The Community Mental Health Survey 2020 was published on the 24th November 2020. This survey looks at the experiences of people receiving community mental health services. This report shows that people are consistently reporting poor experiences of NHS community mental health services, with few positive results.
-
There are few results where the majority of people reported good experiences of mental health care. However, ‘organising care’ is an area where people were found to be more positive
-
Patients were satisfied with the organisation of their care, most patients said they knew who was responsible for overseeing their care and knew how to contact this person with their concerns
-
The majority of respondents reported that they were ‘always’ treated with dignity and respect
-
Poor experiences were reported for crisis care, accessing care, and involvement
-
Some people felt they had to wait too long for treatment or that services did not meet their needs
-
We have also found disparity in the experiences of different groups of people, especially among respondents with different diagnoses and those in the 18-35 age group
Changing how our surveys work
As discussed in our Summer newsletter, CQC are improving and future-proofing the survey programme, by encouraging people to complete questionnaires online wherever possible, rather than only using paper questionnaires.
Following a successful pilot, the 2020 Inpatient Survey features both online and paper questionnaires (i.e. mixed modes). NHS trusts are currently drawing samples and soon questionnaires will start to arrive with patients. The team have been monitoring any impacts caused by the Coronavirus pandemic, for example small changes have been made to the mailing schedule to allow for postal delays so that it doesn’t interfere with the SMS reminders. In addition, this is the first year that contractors will be able to upload trusts’ samples online through the API system. The development of the API system has been a key milestone because fewer manual checks are required.
Following a successful pilot, the 2021 Maternity Survey will also be a mixed-mode survey, featuring both online and paper questionnaires. The survey will run in the spring and will be coordinated by the Coordination Centre for Mixed Methods (Ipsos MORI). Sampling for the survey will begin in March and fieldwork in April, with a webinar for trusts scheduled for early February.
As mentioned in our previous newsletter, the results of a recent Children’s Survey pilot were mixed. It’s possible that these mixed results are due to how mobile telephone numbers are held by NHS trusts. During the 2020 Children and Young People’s Patient Experience Survey we will collect further information from trusts about recorded mobile numbers for children and young people. This will help us investigate the feasibility of future mixed-mode children’s surveys.
We hope to run mixed-mode pilots for the Community Mental Health Survey and Urgent and Emergency Care Survey next to explore whether these surveys should feature online completion options in future. We will be consulting with trusts and services users before pilots begin. If you would like to be involved in any development work, or share examples of similar methods you have
|
Redevelopment work
Redevelopment of benchmark reporting
We are currently working with the Coordination Centre for Mixed Methods (based at Ipsos MORI) on the redevelopment of CQC’s “benchmark reports” — the reports we issue for each trust on their survey results. The purpose of this project is to increase the impact and value they can have for trusts and stakeholders. Over the coming months Ipsos MORI will be conducting interviews with trusts, approved contractors and other stakeholders to understand how the reports are currently used, identify additional data requirements, areas for improvement and what is liked/disliked within the current format.
To help inform our redevelopment work, we are seeking feedback about how we can improve the benchmark reports. If you have any comments or ideas, please contact Christopher Sutherland (Christopher.Sutherland@cqc.org.uk).
Redevelopment of gender questions
In light of CQC’s equality remit and human rights approach, we are working across the survey programme to ensure that our questions about gender are inclusive. Working closely with external experts in the field, and our internal equality and diversity team, we have been able to redevelop the gender questions across multiple surveys to ensure that they better reflect the diversity of gender identities recognised today.
On the 2021 Maternity Survey, 2020 Inpatient Survey and 2021 Community Mental Health Survey we will be asking adults whether their gender is the same as their sex registered at birth, allowing us to capture trans-status and non-cis gender status. To see each of these questionnaires, please visit the survey programme website.
We have also recently completed development work for the 2020 Children and Young People’s Patient Experience Survey. Alongside our collaborators at the Picker Institute, we have worked with stakeholders and internal diversity colleagues to design age-appropriate questions to ask children about their gender. During the redevelopment process we cognitively tested these questions with non cis-gendered children, cis-gendered children and their parents. Following this, we produced three slightly different questions for each of the age groups in the survey (0 to 7, 8 to 11 and 12 to 15) to ensure the language used was suitable. The parents and children we spoke to were happy with our final questions and considered the questions to be age appropriate and inclusive.
For more information on the gender question development work for the children’s survey, we will soon be publishing a survey development report. You will be able to find the report, along with the questionnaires for each age group on the survey’s NHS Survey webpage.
Team news
- In September, Tamatha Webster presented the Inpatient Survey Pilot at the General Online Research Conference. Tamatha will also be presenting findings from the COVID-19 Survey at the next MRS Conference in March.
- We have two new team members, Laura Izod and Amber Cronin, who join us as Research and Survey Officers. Laura joined us from The National Centre for Social Research, where she worked on a variety of health-related research projects and surveys. Amber has joined the team from Healthwatch England, where she analysed national patient experience data and provided research training to the Local Healthwatch Network.
 |
|
Thank you!
Thank you to everyone who has given their time to participate in, or share feedback with us, as part of our work to trial online survey methods. If you would like to participate in future development work, or share your views on any aspect of our work please contact: patient.survey@cqc.org.uk
Look out for our next newsletter in the Spring.
|
|
