Scottish Inpatient Patient Experience Survey 2014 Volume 1: National Results

3. Results - Admission to Hospital

Summary

• Patients mainly rated their admission to hospital positively, with improvements to a number of specific aspects since the previous survey. Overall 83 per cent of patients rated their admission to hospital as excellent or good, an increase of 2 percentage points from 2012.
• Patients also rated most aspects of care and treatment they received in the Accident and Emergency Department (A&E) positively. Eighty-seven per cent of patients rated the overall care and treatment they received in A&E as excellent or good, up 4 percentage points since 2012.
• Patients were least positive about being kept informed about the length of time to wait to be seen by a doctor or nurse in A&E - around one quarter (23%) indicated that they weren't kept informed. Similarly around one in six (17%) indicated that the time waiting to be seen by a doctor or nurse in A&E was too long.

Emergency or planned in advance

3.1. Patients who responded to the survey had either been admitted to hospital as an emergency/urgent admission (61%), or their stay had been planned in advance (39%).

3.2. Of the emergency/urgent patients, 72 per cent went to A&E when they arrived at hospital.

Overall rating of A&E and admission to hospital

3.3. Overall 83 per cent of patients rated their admission to hospital as excellent or good (Chart 1), an increase of 2 percentage points from 2012. Patients rated the care and treatment they received in A&E even more positively with 87 per cent of patient rating them as excellent or good (Chart 2). This is a rise of 4 percentage points compared to the 2012 survey.

Chart 1 Overall rating of admission to hospital (%)

Chart 2 Overall rating of care and treatment in A&E (%)

3.4. Patients were asked to rate various aspects of their experience of admission to hospital whether planned or unplanned. The following table illustrates these views (Table 1). Many of the questions for A&E were either modified from the 2012 survey or are new additions, which prevents comparisons with the 2012 results.

Table 1 Summary of the results to questions about patients' admission to hospital (%)

Notes:

1. Comparison is not available for this question as changes were made to the 2012 question.

2. New question added to the 2014 survey.

3.5. As in previous years, the most positively rated area was around the information provided before attending hospital: 98 per cent of waiting list or planned patients indicated that the information helped them understand what would happen. Another very positive finding was that 97 per cent felt that they were given enough privacy when being examined or treated in A&E.

3.6. Patients were least positive about being kept informed about the wait to be seen by a nurse or doctor in A&E - around one quarter (23%) indicated that they weren't kept informed, while one third (33%) indicated that they were informed 'to some extent' and the remaining 44 per cent felt 'completely' informed. Although views on the actual waiting time to be seen in A&E were generally positive (83% indicated that either they didn't have to wait or that the wait was reasonable), a sizeable proportion (17%) felt that the wait was too long.

3.7. Other areas which were rated less positively related to communication in A&E: 60 per cent indicated that they were kept informed about what was happening after seeing a nurse or doctor 'completely', while 67 per cent felt that their condition was 'completely' discussed with them in a way they could understand.

3.8. There was some variation between NHS Boards around perceptions of the length of time to wait to be seen by a nurse or doctor . Positive results (it was reasonable' and 'I didn't have to wait') ranged from 77 to 97 per cent.

Waiting to be admitted after being referred

3.9. "On 01 October 2012, the Treatment Time Guarantee came into effect. This replaced the nine week standard that was in place from 31 March 2011 to 31 March 2012. […] Previously, the national waiting time standard stated that, from 31 March 2011, no patient waiting for treatment as an inpatient or day case would wait longer than nine weeks."^[3] Information published by ISD shows that only two per cent of patients who attended hospital (as Inpatient or Day Case) during the period covered by the survey (April to September 2013) had to wait longer than 12 weeks^[4].

3.10. In the inpatient survey, 88 per cent of patients thought that the wait to be admitted to hospital after they were referred was reasonable. Of those patients who thought that the time they had to wait was not reasonable, 86 per cent felt that the time they had to wait was too long and 14 per cent felt that the time they had to wait was too short.