Survey process

We are conducting a wide programme of patient surveys covering a range of topics including:

• community mental health
• health services for children and young people
• accident and emergency care for adults
• ambulance and primary care services

Co-ordination centre for the NHS acute patient survey programme

The survey programme for acute patients is co-ordinated by the Picker Institute on our behalf. The role of the co-ordination centre includes:

• identifying and developing questionnaires
• providing documentation and advice on how to conduct the surveys
• acting as a data centre to collate and quality check incoming data
• analysing the survey data
• supporting health service providers to use the survey results to identify priorities for quality improvement in patient care

Measuring patients' experience

Patients are asked to report in detail on their experience of a particular provider at a specific point in time by responding to questions about whether or not certain processes or events occurred during the course of a specific episode of care. Responses to these types of questions are intended to be factual rather than evaluative.

The results

The results for each national survey include a:

• key findings report
• benchmark reports (A-Z list of reports for all trusts)
• tables of results for all questions in the survey

These reports are calculated by converting responses to particular questions into scores. For each question in the survey, the individual responses were scored on a scale of 0 to 100. A score of 100 represents the best possible response. The higher the score for each question, the better the trust is performing.

Our survey results show how each NHS trust in England scored for each question in the survey, in comparison with national benchmark results.

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