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 Community Mental Health Service User Survey, 2021 (CMH21) was designed to provide actionable feedback to each participating trust on service users' views of the care they had received. Fifty-four providers of NHS mental health services in England participated in the Community Mental Health Service User Survey, 2021. This includes combined mental health and social care trusts, foundation trusts and community healthcare social enterprises that provide NHS mental health services. The survey covers issues that affect the quality of care that people receive and were identified by people as important to them. Topics covered include: health and social care workers, planning care, reviewing care, crisis care, treatments and other areas of life. People aged 18 and over were eligible to take part if they were receiving specialist care or treatment for a mental health condition between 1 September 2020 and 30 November 2020. Fieldwork took place between February 2021 and June 2021. The survey team received responses from 17,322 people, a response rate of 26%. As care is ongoing for respondents to this survey, they have experienced community mental health services during different phases of the Covid pandemic.
Main Topics:
The questionnaire covered: care and treatment, health and social care workers, organising care, planning care, reviewing care, crisis care, medicines, talking therapies, support and well-being.
Simple random sample
Postal survey
