Timeline

The Better Together Inpatient survey was sent out during January and February to approximately 63,000 inpatients. The survey will close on the 23 April 2010.

 

During May 2010, NHS Boards will be given online access to their results by their approved contractor. This will allow NHS Boards to start improvement work as soon as the survey closes.

 

The survey data will then be transferred to ISD who are responsible for developing an online system for site and board level reporting. This will be in a similar format to the NHS Staff Survey results. As well as an online reporting tool with results, NHS boards will receive site and board level static reports. These will published at the end of July 2010 as provisional statistics.

 

A national report covering results at a national and board level will be published at the end of September 2010.

During the autumn and winter of 2010, it is likely that a series of reports will be published around equalities.

The Better Together GP survey was sent out in December 2009 to approximately 485,000 people registered with a GP. The survey closed on the 19 April 2010.

Provisional results for each GP practice will be released on Tuesday 27 April 2010. These results will be available to GP Practices, Community Health Partnerships and NHS Boards via an online reporting system. A pdf and html report for each GP practice with also be available. Members of the public will have access to reports for each GP practice on the Better Together website.

 

The access results that will be used to pay GPs and feeds into QOF indicators PE7 and PE8 will be available on the Scottish Government website on 18 May 2010.

 

A National Report will be published on Tuesday 29 June on the Scottish Government and Better Together websites. This will cover national results and comparisons between NHS Boards. Additional features will be added to the online reporting system and GP practice reports on this date to allow comparisons to be made against National and NHS Board and CHP averages.

 

Over the summer, various topic reports will be published around equalities.

The quantitative Better Together in-patient and GP surveys do not include questions on topics which are important only to equality groups. In addition, the quantitative surveys exclude some groups (children under 16, cognitively frail elderly, learning disabled and mental health patients) from their samples. Moreover, it may not be possible to break down survey data into certain population groups because of low numbers of respondents.

 

As such, the Gaps Group has been established to explore how the views and issues which are important to a range of groups will be captured. The group, chaired by Paul Barton (NHS Health) met for the first time on 10 February 2010 and will be developing ways of ensuring that the healthcare experience of all of the people of Scotland can be captured in appropriate ways to suit the needs and interests of different groups. Better Together will be working with the four NHS Boards, who were pilot sites for the in-patient survey, to review the data  from the pilot surveys and national surveys to identify priorities (gaps) for further action.

The survey findings will reveal lowlights and highlights to NHS Boards, enabling them to focus improvement activity alongside other data led improvement work. During our visits to NHS Boards, they told us that they see this information as adding an extra dimension to their understanding of patient experience in their own area. The programme will be supporting NHS Board following the publication of survey results around their improvement activity.

Better Together is working in partnership with the Long Term Conditions Alliance Scotland and Long Term Conditions Collaborative to identify best practice in gathering experience from all care settings for all people with long term conditions. This work will identify best practice in analysis of that information, in improving experience and in using experience for improvements.