Our ‘Improving Patient Experience’ programme focuses on the series of national patient experience surveys, and uses a range of techniques to help decision makers identify opportunities to improve the quality of care for patients. Most of our work to date has focused on the national Inpatient Survey but is now being extended to the other national surveys (Accident and Emergency services and Maternity Services).
The national survey of NHS inpatients is a longstanding summative survey of patient experiences with sufficiently large samples to provide a robust measure of patients’ views on many aspects of their experiences. The survey has been developed and tested over many years, and the validity and reliability of assessments using this tool are well understood. Despite this, the survey results are underused as a source of insights for improving experience.
To maximise use, local findings need to be readily understood and accessible. To this end, the CQC publishes an annual summative assessment of each NHS Trust on every domain against national mean scores, and a national summary of the main changes in ratings for England as a whole. Furthermore, Trusts receive an extensive report on local survey findings from their chosen survey provider. Typically, this will be a lengthy report covering Survey Response rates, historical comparisons, external and internal benchmarks, but with limited graphical analysis or textual interpretation.
NEQOS therefore provides more informative graphical analysis and narrative interpretation. Our report also analyses and comments on performance over time and in comparison to national benchmarks for both the domains of the NICE Quality Standard for patient experience and the domains of CQC reporting.
Our aim is that subscribers are better placed to understand the domains in which patients report they are making most progress and where there is most room for improvement. This provides subscribers with key insights for targeting long-term strategy for improving patient experience.
To find out how NEQOS’ expertise can support your organisation in achieving better knowledge, better care and better outcomes, please contact us.