Health and Care Experience Survey: results 2019/2020

2. About the Survey

The Scottish Health and Care Experience Survey is a postal survey which was sent to a random sample of people who were registered with a GP in Scotland in August 2019. The survey has been run every two years since 2009 and forms part of the Scottish Care Experience Survey Programme, which is a suite of national surveys aiming to provide local and national information on the quality of health and care services from the perspective of those using them.

Questionnaires were sent out in October 2019 asking about people's experiences during the previous 12 months. The survey asks about people's experiences of accessing and using their GP practice and other local healthcare services; receiving care, support and help with everyday living; and caring responsibilities.

The focus of this report is on the national results of the survey. Comparisons have been made with the previous iterations of this survey where this is possible. A copy of the questionnaire can be found here https://www.gov.scot/publications/health-and-care-experience-survey/

Results for each GP practice, GP Cluster, Health and Social Care Partnership and NHS Board are available via an online dashboard at: https://beta.isdscotland.org/find-publications-and-data/health-services/primary-care/health-and-care-experience-survey/health-and-care-experience-survey-2020/

Aims

The survey's specific aims were:

National results

• for informing national planning and monitoring performance;
• monitor the NHS Scotland Local Delivery Plan standards^[2] on accessing GP services;
• informs nine out of the 23 health and wellbeing outcomes indicators under the Public Bodies (Joint Working) (Scotland) Act 2014.

For local improvement^[3]

• provide GP practices with structured feedback on people's experiences of their service relative to other practices in Scotland;
• provide NHS Boards, Health & Social Care Partnerships and GP Clusters with information about people's experiences in their respective areas and between local areas.

Context

The survey supports the three quality ambitions of the 2020 Vision^[4] – Safe, Effective, Person-centred – by providing a basis for the measurement of quality as experienced by service users across Scotland. In particular the surveys support the person-centred quality ambition which is focused on ensuring that care is responsive to people's individual preferences, needs and values.

Design and Response

The survey is a random sample of patients registered with a GP practice designed in such a way as to provide results for individual GP practices as well as providing information for use by NHS Boards; Health and Social Care Partnerships and GP Clusters.

People eligible to be sampled for the survey were those who were registered to a Scottish GP practice at 20^th August 2019 and were aged seventeen or over at that date. A total of 604,127 survey packs were sent out and 160,372 were returned giving a response rate of twenty seven per cent. This is an increase in response compared with the previous survey which was twenty two per cent. The increase in response is across all age groups and demographics.

Throughout this report, with the exception of the data in section 3, analysis is presented as weighted average percentages. Weighting the results in this way provides results which are more representative of the population of Scotland as a whole. Details of the weighting methodology can be found at www.gov.scot/HACE.

All changes over time that are discussed in the report are statistically significant at the five per cent level. Due to the large sample size, even small changes of one per cent in the national results may be statistically significant.

More information about the survey design, response rates and methodology can be found in the Technical Report available at: www.gov.scot/ISBN/978-1-80004-187-5