Scottish Inpatient Patient Experience Survey 2014 Volume 1: National Results

10. Results - Care and Support Services

Summary

• Most people were positive about the care and support services that were arranged for them for after leaving hospital. Patients reported in most cases that these were right for them. However a small proportion of patients reported that they had had to wait for their care and services to be organised.

Care and support Services

10.1. Waiting unnecessarily in hospital when clinically ready to be discharged can result in poorer outcomes for individuals as well as being a waste of healthcare resources. As a result, there is a national NHS Scotland HEAT target by which no patients should be delayed by more than 28 days before being discharged to an appropriate care setting when they were found clinically ready for discharge. Current and future targets for delayed discharges can be found on the Scottish Government website^[24].

10.2. Among those patients who responded to the survey, 24 per cent needed care or support services to be arranged for them when they got out of hospital. This figure has not changed since 2012.

10.3. Of these patients who needed care or support services:

• 83 per cent rated the care or support services they got after leaving hospital as excellent or good, 8 per cent rated them as poor or very poor and 9 per cent rated them as fair (Chart 16)
• 14 per cent of patients indicated that they had to stay in hospital longer than expected to wait for their care or support services to be organised
• However 9 out of 10 patients reported that the care and support services they had received after leaving hospital were right for them.

10.4. These results have remained largely unchanged since the questions were introduced in 2012.

Chart 16 Overall, how would you rate the care or support services you got after leaving hospital? (%)