DOI: 10.5255/ukda-sn-8950-1
title: Acute Trusts: Adult Inpatient Survey, 2020
title: National Health Service Patient Survey Programme, 2003-

description: &lt;p&gt;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.&lt;br&gt; &lt;br&gt;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.&lt;br&gt; &lt;br&gt; 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.&lt;br&gt; &lt;br&gt; &lt;i&gt;History of the programme&lt;br&gt;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;br&gt; 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.&lt;br&gt; &lt;br&gt; Further information about the National Patient Survey Programme may be found on the CQC &lt;a href="http://www.cqc.org.uk/content/surveys" title="Patient Survey Programme" ,="" target="_blank"&gt;Patient Survey Programme&lt;/a&gt; web pages.&lt;br&gt; &lt;br&gt; &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="x_x_x_x_MsoNormal"&gt;&lt;span&gt;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 us about their experiences.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="x_x_x_x_MsoNormal"&gt;&lt;span&gt;A total of 137 NHS trusts in England who deliver adult inpatient services participated in the 2020 survey. All patients aged 16 years or over at the time of their hospital stay were eligible to take part if they were treated by the trust during November 2020. Fieldwork took place between January 2021 and May 2021. In total, we received completed questionnaires from 73,015 people, a response rate of 46%. &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="x_x_x_x_MsoNormal"&gt;&lt;span&gt;Fieldwork for the adult inpatient survey took place during the COVID-19 pandemic, with questionnaires sent to patients who were in hospital during November 2020, coinciding with the early stages of the second peak. Therefore, results of this survey reflect experiences of care throughout the COVID-19 pandemic&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="x_x_x_x_MsoNormal"&gt;&lt;span&gt;The 2020 adult inpatient survey was the first survey in the NHS Patient Survey Programme to transition from using an entirely paper-based to mixed-mode data collection methodology, offering both online and paper completion.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="x_x_x_x_MsoNormal"&gt;&lt;span&gt;The 2020 adult inpatient survey is not comparable to previous surveys, due to the &lt;/span&gt;&lt;a href="https://nhssurveys.org/surveys/survey/06-development-work/"&gt;&lt;span&gt;2019 pilot finding&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;span&gt; the changes in methodology impacted how participants responded. We therefore took the opportunity to extensively amend the questionnaire content and move the sample period from July to November. Trend data is planned to be re-established from the 2021 adult inpatient survey.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="x_x_x_x_MsoNormal"&gt;&lt;span&gt;The results are intended for use by NHS trusts to help them improve their performance as well as being an essential quality indicator for the work of organisations including the Care &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="x_x_x_x_MsoNormal"&gt;&lt;span&gt;Quality Commission (CQC), NHS England and NHS Improvement and the Department for Health and Social care. &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;