NHS England, along with a consortium of partners, is inviting people from across England to give feedback on their recent experiences of using urgent and emergency care (UEC) services.
The survey, which is live now, asks people about their recent experiences to help better understand what they have accessed, why and what their experience was like. The survey is easy-to-fill-out and will be live for 6 weeks.
Urgent and emergency care (UEC) services perform a critical role in keeping the population healthy. The NHS responds to more than 110 million urgent and emergency calls or visits every year, so it is essential that the system works effectively.
Anyone who has accessed any type of urgent and emergency care over the last 4 years is invited to take part, however the survey is particularly interested in anyone who may have used these services over the last three months.
Services include 999 emergency services, A&E departments, NHS 111 online including NHS App and NHS.uk), NHS 111 telephone service (including textphone service and NHS 111 Clinical Assessment Service and Urgent Treatment centres.
The information will give health bosses a more comprehensive overview of patient experiences in England.
Dr Mark Lomax from PEP Health who is collating the feedback, said. “This is a really great opportunity for us to hear first-hand from patients about their experiences to help us gain a better understanding of how things have changed in the last four years. And, importantly, what can be done to improve it.”
“We want to gain as much information and views from as many people as we can and as wide a range as possible in terms their interactions with the system. It’s a great chance for them to have their say so we can look at how we can make healthcare work better for local people and across the country.”
The research programme will help support NHS England’s understanding and is being supported by a consortium of five UK-based organisations including Eastern AHSN (Academic Health Science Network), digital health company PEP Health, Patient Experience Library (PEL), Ethnic Opinions’ and Traverse.
As well as the questionnaire, patient feedback is also being collated from a variety of places such as focus groups and analysing comments made on social media platforms.
All the findings will be brought together in a final report that will be published later in the year.
Take part in the survey here.