Inpatient experience survey 2016, volume 3: exploring differences in experience

Executive Summary

This report explores differences in the self-reported experiences of different groups of people based on the 2015/16 Scottish Inpatient Experience Survey.

Over 17,000 people took part in the survey which included a range of questions covering topics such as accident and emergency, care and treatment, staff, leaving hospital and care and support at home. It also included a number of "About you" questions, which provides information about the personal characteristics of respondents.

The survey results show that overall, people reported a similarly positive experience to the previous survey, with 'overall' ratings improving or staying the same for all but two sections of the survey (leaving hospital and care and support services after leaving hospital).

Key findings

Of the characteristics analysed, self-reported general health, those with pre-existing health conditions, and age are most often associated with differences in reported care experience, being significant for over 80 per cent of the 80 questions analysed (Figure 1).

• People reporting fair or poor health status were significantly more negative than those reporting good health
• People with certain pre-existing health conditions were significantly more negative
• Older people were significantly more positive
• Males were significantly more positive
• People who were emergency admissions were significantly more negative than those who had planned admissions
• Other, General and Community hospitals were significantly more positive where as Large General hospitals were significantly more negative than teaching hospitals
• People who live in SIMD 4 or SIMD 5 (least deprived) areas of Scotland were significantly more negative than those living in SIMD 1 (most deprived)

Figure 1: Number of questions affected by various characteristics - all survey questions