Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what plans he has to increase the use of patient experience surveys in the NHS to inform patient safety initiatives; and if he will make a statement.

Patient experience surveys are a valuable source of evidence and the results are used in a range of ways, including the assessment of National Health Service performance as well as in regulatory activities such as registration, monitoring ongoing compliance and reviews. The Care Quality Commission has developed a new Intelligent Monitoring tool to give inspectors a clear picture of the areas of care that need to be followed up within an NHS acute trust or a specialist NHS trust. The system is built on a set of indicators that look at a range of information including patient experience, staff experience and performance.

In addition to the patient experience surveys hospital boards and other providers and commissioners of services can also consider the results of the Friends and Family Test (FFT) to consider the implications for quality and safety. While not a traditional survey, the FFT provides near real-time feedback to identify both good and poor quality patient experience. A NHS England review of the FFT found that it is performing well as a service improvement tool, with 85% of trusts reporting that it is being used to improve patient experience, and 78% saying that FFT has increased the emphasis placed on patient experience in their trusts.