The Scottish Government

Title

Healthcare experience.

National Indicator/Target

Improve the quality of healthcare experience.

Brief Description

This measure will be developed based on information from the new Programme for Improving Healthcare Experience which was announced in March 2007.

It will provide an indicator of how positive the experience of using healthcare services is for patients and carers.

Strategic Objective(s) to Which Indicator Relates

This indicator informs progress in relation to the Healthier Strategic Objective.

More Detailed Definitions

Definitions of Keywords

Patients are defined as healthcare users after a specific episode of care. In the first instance these will be from a hospital inpatient setting.

Carers are defined as the people who are the principle support for a person using healthcare services. In the first instance these will be from a hospital inpatient setting.

Evidence Source

Source: Better Together: Scotland's Patient Experience Programme.

This indicator is yet to be fully developed, as it is based on a new programme of surveys, and other qualitative and improvement work, that will be carried out during 2009.

It is likely to be a proxy measure based on the experiences of hospital patients, rather than encompassing the whole range of services in the first instance. However, the focus could be changed in future years.

The measure will either be an overall indicator of healthcare experience; or an indicator of experience in the aspect of care that is identified as most important to patients in Scotland.

Baseline and Past Trends

The 2009 survey will provide a baseline measurement, and improvement will be assessed from then. As this is a new programme, there are no past data.

Methodology

Likely to be a stratified random sample of patients.

In England an equivalent programme samples 850 patients per NHS Trust (with a 60% response rate). This sample size was derived using sample power calculations based on analysis requirements relating to sampling error for top-line results, ensuring that the sample has sufficient power to detect differences over time.

Work is being undertaken during 2008/9 to develop the methodology in a Scottish context.

Data Ownership and Quality Assurance

As this is a new data source the initial results will not be National Statistics. Consideration will be given once the survey is established whether to apply for National Statistics staus or not.

Publication of Data

The data will be published at www.bettertogetherscotland.com on an annual basis after the first survey is completed in 2009.