Health and Care Experience Survey 2023/24: National Results

Introduction

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 General Practice in Scotland, lived in Scotland, and were aged 17 and over on 25 September 2023.

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 which 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 and November 2023 asking about peoples’ experiences during the previous 12 months.

Aims

The survey’s specific objectives are:

For local improvement:

• Provide General Practices with structured feedback on peoples’ experiences of their service, relative to other practices in Scotland and to previous results.
• Provide NHS Boards, Health & Social Care Partnerships and General Practice Clusters with information about peoples’ experiences in their respective areas, and variation within and between local areas.

For national improvement:

• Inform national planning and monitor performance.
• Identify variation within and between local areas, and if, and how the level of positive and negative experiences has changed over time.
• Highlight areas of best practice and areas for improvement.
• Inform the Quality of Care Experience National Performance Framework indicator.
• Inform the NHS Scotland Local Delivery Plan standards on accessing General Practice services.
• Inform nine out of the twenty-three Integration Indicators under the Public Bodies (Joint Working) (Scotland) Act 2014.

This survey is a means for Scottish Ministers to monitor how well they are fulfilling their duty, under Section 1 of the NHS (Scotland) Act 1978, to continue to promote a comprehensive and integrated health service that is designed to secure:

• Improvement in the physical and mental health of the people of Scotland.
• The prevention, diagnosis and treatment of illness, and for that purpose to provide or secure the effective provision of services in accordance with the 1978 Act.

Context

The Care Experience Programme supports three strategic objectives for both the Scottish Government and NHS Scotland – that care is safe, effective and person centred. It does this by providing a basis for the measurement of quality as experienced by people across Scotland.

In addition, the programme supports the Chief Medical Officer’s vision that, by 2025, we will support the Health and Social Care workforce to practice Realistic Medicine, thereby enabling the delivery of high quality and personalised care to the people of Scotland.

Fieldwork for the previous round of the survey (2021/22) was carried out during the COVID-19 pandemic and this must be kept in mind when comparing the two rounds.

Outputs

In this report, we show the results at a national level.

Other outputs of the survey available on the Health and Care Experience Survey collection page are:

• An excel spreadsheet showing results at national level and broken down at Health and Social Care Partnership level, Health Board, General Practice Cluster and General Practice level.
• An excel spreadsheet with data used for the charts and tables in this report.
• A technical report with details of the survey design and methodology.

Other material related to the survey, including a copy of the 2023/24 survey questionnaire, are available online, together with other survey materials.

In addition, results for each General Practice, General Practice Cluster, Health and Social Care Partnership and NHS Board, as well as time series trends where applicable, are available via an online dashboard hosted by Public Health Scotland.

Throughout this report the survey results are presented as weighted average percentages. Different proportions of people were selected from each General Practice and the response rate varied by age and sex. Weighting the results provides results which are more representative of the population of Scotland as a whole.

Where applicable, we compare data with results from previous rounds of the survey. All changes over time that are discussed in the report are statistically significant at the ninety-five per cent level. Due to the large sample size, even small changes of 1% in the national results may be statistically significant.

An Accredited Official Statistics Publication for Scotland

These statistics are accredited official statistics. The Office for Statistics Regulation has independently reviewed and accredited these statistics as complying with the standards of trustworthiness, quality, and value in the Code of Practice for Statistics.

These statistics were accredited in April 2012 and accredited official statistics are called National Statistics in the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007.

Scottish Government statistics are regulated by the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR). OSR sets the standards of trustworthiness, quality and value in the Code of Practice for Statistics that all producers of official statistics should adhere to.