Website of the Department of Health

This publication updates the patient experience scores previously published on 29 January 2007. Results have been updated to include scores derived from survey results published by the Healthcare Commission for 2006/07. There are new data points for ‘adult inpatients’ and ‘community mental health’ in 2006/07. These figures report on progress against the PSA target for sustained improvement in patient experience.

In addition, two new tables have been included for the first time to show:

• Scores on 'involvement in decisions about healthcare' and
• A baseline score for 'choice of provider' showing the position before the choice of provider policy was implemented

Key points from the latest release

• The overall patient experience score for adult inpatients in 2006/07 has increased slightly to 76.4 from the score of 76.2 in 2005/06. The score is 0.7 points higher than in the earliest fully comparable year of 2003/04 (75.7).

• The overall patient experience score for community mental health services in 2006/07 has increased to 75.2, up 0.7 points from the score of 74.5 in 2005/06.  Direct comparison of overall scores with earlier years is not possible because of changes in question wording for one question.  Comparisons are possible across 3 of the 4 ‘domains’ of patient experience and two of these show increases since 2003-04 (whilst the third shows a small fall).

• Scores for ‘involvement in decisions about healthcare’ cannot be compared across sectors.  The baseline scores for emergency services (2004/05) is 77.1.  The baseline score for outpatients (2004/05) is 81.7.  For adult inpatients, the latest score of 70.9 is unchanged from 2003/04.  Results for community mental health services show a slight increase to 63.7 in 2006/07 (from 63.3 in 2003/04) whilst primary care results are slightly lower at 81.9 in 2005/06, compared to 82.1 in 2003/04

• The baseline score for ‘choice of provider’ is 27.3 from the 2005/06 DH survey of PCTs.  This score represents the baseline position in the last year before the choice of provider policy was introduced.  It is broadly equivalent to previously published figures on the percentage of people offered a choice, but standardised by age and gender to provide a score on the same basis as other elements in this publication.

• Download the latest release in full (PDF, 84K)
• Further information on the patient experience PSA methodology and the national patient survey programme is available here