Authors' objectives: The NHS is in difficulty. Financial pressures are increasing and there is evidence that care standards are poor in some places as more care is being delivered with less money. As a result, NHS England and others have tried to refresh core values like compassion and patient-centred care. To ensure the patient voice is heard, Trusts are now required to collect feedback from patients routinely. A lot of time and (scarce) money is being spent collecting this information, but without clear evidence-based guidance about what questions to ask, or how best to collect this information. Likewise, there is no evidence to guide Trusts in how to use this information to improve services. We do not know what kinds of feedback are most important or what management processes are needed to translate this into effective action plans. And we do not know if this makes any difference to patients themselves. We propose to address these issues by concentrating on experiences of inpatient mental health care. Many mental health service users have had bad care experiences historically, and this tends to be worst in inpatient units, which are very expensive to run and can be unwelcoming, disturbed and frightening places. Self-harm, suicide and violence are common, and it is well known that people of Black ethnicity are more likely than other ethnic groups to be admitted to hospital. And while inpatient mental health care is very important in its own right, we are confident that our findings about best practice in collecting and using patient experience data will be applicable in other healthcare settings. We are deliberately proposing a bottom-up approach. Every Trust in the country collects patient feedback data, and in some case they have spent years setting up local systems for this. It is very unlikely that new top-down methods for collecting patient experience data would be readily and widely adopted because this would mean abandoning what Trusts are already committed to doing. So instead we view the wide range of current approaches as a natural experiment from which we can learn about what is (and isn t) working. We believe that there are differences between organisations that are genuinely committed to using patient experience data to improve services. We have 5 study aims. After completing a systematic review to identify patient experience themes relevant to mental health care (Aim 1), we will identify, describe and classify approaches to collecting and using patient experience data to improve inpatient mental health services across England (Aim 2). We will use this information to choose 10 Trusts around the country for in-depth case studies where we will carry out interviews to find out what works for whom, and where (Aim 3). We will look particularly for evidence of meaningful service user and carer involvement, and for service improvement activity. We will present our findings to experts (including service users and carers) at a consensus conference to agree on recommendations about best practice (Aim 4). We will ensure that our results are anchored in what is acceptable, feasible and sustainable in real-world NHS settings. Finally, we will use health economics to predict the costs that would arise (and savings that might occur) if best practice in collecting and using patient experience data was widely adopted, and we will speak to senior NHS colleagues to explore obstacles to adopting best practice (Aim 5).

Project Status: Completed

URL for project: http://www.nets.nihr.ac.uk/projects/hsdr/1415620

Year Published: 2020

URL for published report: http://www.nets.nihr.ac.uk/projects/hsdr/1415620

English language abstract: An English language summary is available

Publication Type: Not Assigned

Country: England, United Kingdom

Organisation Name: NIHR Health Services and Delivery Research programme

Contact Address: NIHR Journals Library, National Institute for Health and Care Research, Evaluation, Trials and Studies Coordinating Centre, Alpha House, University of Southampton Science Park, Southampton SO16 7NS, UK

Contact Name: journals.library@nihr.ac.uk

Contact Email: journals.library@nihr.ac.uk

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