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 Maternity Survey, 2017 looked at all three stages of the maternity pathway and covered care provided before birth (antenatal), during labour and birth, and in the first few weeks after birth (postnatal). The survey involved 130 NHS trusts in England and questionnaires were sent to 50,008 women. Responses were received from 18,426 women, an adjusted response rate of 37.4 per cent. Further information and documentation can be found on the NHS Surveys Maternity Survey 2017 web pages.
Main Topics:
The questionnaire covered: timings of the birth, antenatal care, labour and birth, postnatal care, feeding, care at home after birth and basic demographic information.For anonymity and confidentiality reasons a number of variables have been removed or recoded as follows: most sample variables provided by trusts (as described in the survey instruction manual) have been removed; G1 (specific age of respondents) has been recoded into age group (age_group) (and uses sample information if response data is missing); A1 (multiple births), C2 (home birth) and G4-G7 (demographics) have been removed due to very low numbers at trust level. G2 and G3 (previous pregnancy and births) have been recoded into a new variable called ‘Parity’. All information relating to non-respondents has been removed.
See documentation for details
Postal survey
