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, 2021 looked at all three stages of the maternity pathway, covering care provided before birth (antenatal), during labour and birth, and in the first few weeks after birth (postnatal). The survey involved NHS trusts in England. Women who gave birth between 1 and 28 February 2021 (and January if a trust did not have a minimum of 300 eligible births in February) were invited to take part in the survey. Fieldwork took place between April and August 2021. This was during the third national lockdown for the COVID-19 pandemic. This means that respondents will have gone through their antenatal, labour and birth, and postnatal stages under pandemic conditions. Therefore, results of this survey reflect experiences of care throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. The 2021 maternity survey was also the first mixed-mode maternity survey in the NHS Survey Programme, where women were encouraged to respond online (but were also given the option of postal completion). The survey received responses from 23,479 women. The response rate increased substantially, from 36% in 2019 to 52% in 2021, with 89% of women taking part online. The results are intended for use by NHS trusts to help them improve their performance as well as being an essential quality indicator for the work of organisations including the CQC, NHS England and NHS Improvement and the Department for Health and Social care.
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The questionnaire included questions on antenatal care, labour and birth, postnatal care, feeding, and care at home after birth.
See documentation for details
Postal survey
Web-based interview
