The best and worst performing trusts on patient experience

The 2016 survey, published today by the Care Quality Commission, identified whether trusts’ scores were significantly better or worse than the average. 

Five trusts were identified as statistically worse than average - graded band “1” - for overall patient experience. Twelve trusts were graded better than average (band “3”) for the same question.

The rating takes into account the number of respondents as well as the scores for all other trusts to ”confidently” calculate whether a trust is performing better or worse than the majority of others.

One is the lowest score, three the best and a rating of two means that the trust is performing about the same as others.

Best and worst performing trusts for overall patient experience of care:

Of five of the trusts that scored one - worse than average - two are already in CQC special measures: West Hertfordshire Hospitals Trust and The Princess Alexandra Hospital Trust. One, Medway Foundation Trust exited the CQC regime in March this year.

The top dozen trusts were all specialist acute trusts bar two, Royal Devon and Exeter Foundation Trust and University Hospitals Bristol Foundation Trust. This result repeats a pattern often found in patient experience surveys.

Overall this year, the CQC survey found that patients’ experience of hospital care is holding up despite rising concerns over waiting times and discharge support.

Five hospitals were also performing worse than expected for the support they offered to patients from health and social care workers upon discharge. Of these only one, West Hertfordshire, was also rated as an outlier for overall patient experience.

Chief nurse, Tracey Carter from West Hertfordshire said in response to the survey results: “Our patient experience and carer strategy launched at the end of 2016 and focuses on what our patients tell us is important to them.

“We have set up patient focus groups in emergency care and run training days for staff on improving the patient experience. Carers and family members are actively involved in our discharge procedures and we are rolling out the ‘Red Bag’ care home initiative which keeps a patient’s records, personal items and their discharge summary safely in one place.”

Best and worst performing trusts for offering enough support from health or social care professionals after discharge:

The best performers for offering support on discharge was not as focused on specialist trusts as with the question on overall experience. Just four specialist trusts were rated as outperforming the majority of other trusts when it came to discharge help, and these four were also placed in the top ten of performers for overall patient experience.

In response to CQC survey, Adam Steventon, director of data analytics at the Health Foundation, said: “21 per cent of patients [overall] report not getting enough support from health or social care professionals to help them recover and manage their conditions after leaving hospital. This is significant, as there is evidence that better support after leaving hospital is associated with lower readmission rates and so has the potential not just to reduce costs, but importantly also improve care for patients.”

Each trust was also awarded a mean score for the results of each survey question. The higher the score, the better a trust is performing, with ten as the top score. 

Karen Rule, director of nursing at the worst-rated trust on overall experience, Medway, said: ”Since the survey was conducted last year there has been significant improvement across the trust in the quality of the care that we provide and the experience of our patients, with a CQC inspection in November 2016 rating us as ‘good’ for the caring domain and NHS Improvement subsequently removing us from the special measures regimen.

“We recognise that we need to continue to focus on improving our care and the experience of our patients and will be doing so over the coming months.”