A framework for NHS patient experience
The Department has today published the NHS Patient Experience Framework, which outline the areas most important to patients’ experience of NHS…
The Department has today published the NHS Patient Experience Framework, which outline the areas most important to patients’ experience of NHS services.
Improving patient experience is a key aim for the NHS. By asking, monitoring, and acting upon patient feedback, organisations are able to make improvements in the areas that patients say matter most to them.
This framework is significant for healthcare organisations because it provides a common evidence-based list of what matters to patients, and can be used to direct efforts to improve services. For example it can be used to help define what questions to ask patients in surveys and in real time feedback.
Download the patient experience framework
The Framework was agreed by the National Quality Board Patient Experience Sub Group and draws on research published from the King’s Fund and King’s College London. That research suggested it is possible to apply a single generic framework for patient experience to a wide range of health conditions and settings, and recommended that the DH adopts a common framework for this purpose.
This Framework agreed by NQB is based on a modified version of the Picker Institute Principles of Patient-Centred Care.
Applying the framework
Different areas of the framework will be more significant in particular settings for different groups of patients and therefore demographics, equality, and environment will need to be considered when applying the framework.
Healthcare organisations will also need to have regard to the Equality Act 2010 and the three aims of the public sector equality duty:
- the need to eliminate unlawful discrimination, harassment and victimisation
- advance equality of opportunity between people who share a protected characteristic and people who do
- promote good relations between people who share a protected characteristic and those who do not.
The new equality duty replaced three sets of equality duties - for race, disability and gender - and covers the following protected characteristics: age, disability;,gender reassignment, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex and sexual orientation.