Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.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. 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. 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. History of the programme 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. Further information about the National Patient Survey Programme may be found on the CQC Patient Survey Programme web pages.
The Maternity Survey, 2007 was designed to provide actionable feedback to each participating NHS trust on patients' views of the maternity care they had received, as well as providing the Healthcare Commission with patient-focused indicators to feed into the 2007 performance ratings for acute and specialist trusts. Approximately three months after they had given birth, women included in the sample were sent a postal questionnaire to complete. The questionnaire covered each of the three main stages in maternity care: during pregnancy (antenatal care), during labour and delivery, and after the birth (postnatal care). Data from the survey provided information about women's views and experiences, to be used by commissioners and providers of services, to help identify areas that require improvement. The results from the survey are also used in the Healthcare Commission's 'Maternity Services Review', which assesses the quality, capability and efficiency of maternity services. Although 151 trusts providing maternity services took part in the survey, the dataset contains data for 148 trusts: two trusts were excluded due to the very small size of their maternity units, which meant that very few women could be included in their sample. The results from a third trust were excluded from the national figures due to a sampling error that resulted in a lack of comparability of their data with other trusts. For the third edition (July 2009), a new version of the data file was supplied in which the variables J8 and J9 are no longer included.
Main Topics:
Topics covered included: baby birth dates and weights; antenatal care and check-ups; tests and scans; choices of care; medical problems and pregnancy care; antenatal classes; labour and delivery, including medical care; midwives and other healthcare staff; home births; hospital care after birth; infant feeding; special care and neonatal units; home care after birth; and respondents' demographic characteristics.
Each healthcare trust identified women patients who had given birth in February 2007 (if the trust had had fewer than 200 births that month, January 2007 was also included). The sample size for each trust therefore varied. Women who had a stillbirth, whose baby had died since delivery, or those aged 16 years or under at the time of their baby's birth were not included.
Postal survey
