Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.The National Patient Survey Programme is one of the largest patient survey programmes in the world. It provides an opportunity to monitor experiences of health and provides data to assist with registration of trusts and monitoring on-going compliance. Understanding what people think about the care and treatment they receive is crucial to improving the quality of care being delivered by healthcare organisations. One way of doing this is by asking people who have recently used the health service to tell the Care Quality Commission (CQC) about their experiences. The CQC will use the results from the surveys in the regulation, monitoring and inspection of NHS acute trusts (or, for community mental health service user surveys, providers of mental health services) in England. Data are used in CQC Insight, an intelligence tool which identifies potential changes in quality of care and then supports deciding on the right regulatory response. Survey data will also be used to support CQC inspections. Each survey has a different focus. These include patients' experiences in outpatient and accident and emergency departments in Acute Trusts, and the experiences of people using mental health services in the community. History of the programme The National Patient Survey Programme began in 2002, and was then conducted by the Commission for Health Improvement (CHI), along with the Commission for Healthcare Audit and Inspection (CHAI). Administration of the programme was taken over by the Healthcare Commission in time for the 2004 series. On 1 April 2009, the CQC was formed, which replaced the Healthcare Commission. Further information about the National Patient Survey Programme may be found on the CQC Patient Survey Programme web pages.
The Acute Trusts: Outpatient Surveys, 2003-2004 were designed to provide actionable feedback to each participating trust on patients' views of the care they had received in outpatient departments in England, as well as providing CHI/CHAI with patient-focused indicators to feed into the 2003-2004 performance ratings for acute and specialist NHS trusts.
Main Topics:
Topics covered included: length of time patient waited for hospital outpatient appointment; general cleanliness of the department and toilet facilities; time spent with doctor; trust and confidence in doctor; information needs of the patient and health care advice provided; treatment given; medicinal drugs dispensed; whether patient was treated with dignity and respect; age; gender; ethnic group; educational background and whether help needed with English language.
Simple random sample
NHS trusts with an outpatient department which treats adults (age 16 or over) took part in the survey. Each trust identified a list of eligible patients (see Population section). Staff at the hospital selected 850 patients from the list, at random, so that the responses to the survey would be typical of the experience of all patients attending outpatient clinics. The sampled patients were sent a postal questionnaire and a covering letter. Patients who did not respond were sent up to two reminders. Each trust was responsible for ensuring that their survey was carried out following the standard sampling and survey procedures, as set out in the guidance issued to them.
Postal survey
