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 Emergency Department Survey, 2016 is the sixth iteration in a series of surveys focusing on patient experiences of emergency services. This survey involved 137 acute and specialist NHS trusts with a Type 1 accident and emergency department (major, consultant led Accident and Emergency Department with full resuscitation facilities operating 24 hours a day, 7 days a week). 49 of these trusts also had direct responsibility for running a Type 3 department (Accident and Emergency /minor injury unit with designated accommodation for the reception of accident and emergency patients) and patients from these departments were included within the survey for the first time in 2016. Responses were received from 45,597people. Further information is available on the CQC Emergency Department Survey 2016 and NHS Surveys webpages. Although surveys of Emergency Departments have been carried out previously (in 2003 (SN 5092) 2004/5 (SN 5092) 2008 (SN 6329) 2012 (SN 7406) and 2014 (SN 8138)) results from the 2016 survey are not comparable with these because of changes made to the sampling and analysis strategy. For more information please see Statistical Release and Quality and Methodology reports.
Main Topics:
The survey covers issues that affect the quality of care that patients receive and were identified by patients as important to them. Topics covered included: arriving at the Emergency Department, waiting, doctors and nurses, care and treatment, tests, pain, hospital environment and facilities and discharge.
Multi-stage stratified random sample
The sampling methodology used in ED16 was different from that used in previous iterations of the survey, and included a number of steps, more detailed information on this can be found in the documentation.
Postal survey
