At a time of growing concern about the future of the NHS, patients’ satisfaction with the care they get in hospital has risen, shows the latest survey by the NHS watchdog body, the Healthcare Commission.
The survey, of more than 80 000 inpatients in 169 trusts in England, found that 92% rated their care as excellent, very good, or good. The previous year this percentage was 90%.
Nearly four in five patients (79%) said they were always treated with dignity and respect. Furthermore, the number waiting more than four hours to be admitted to a ward or bed from emergency departments has dropped.
The survey, which was conducted last autumn and gives results nationally and for individual trusts, is one of England’s biggest ever assessments of patients’ views. Its results will influence the commission’s annual health check of trust performance, which is due to be published in October.
But it also highlights continuing concerns about the cleanliness of wards, poor communication, and lack of information on discharge.
More than two out of five patients (42%) left hospital without being told about the side effects of their drugs, and a similar proportion (40%) were not warned about possible danger signals following their treatment. A quarter did not know whom to contact if they were worried about their condition.
Eight per cent reported that their room or ward wasn’t clean, and 13% were unhappy with the bathroom and toilet areas. One of the worst trusts was Homerton University Foundation Trust, in Hackney, east London. Just over a fifth of hospital patients there said their ward was dirty, and a third reported that the toilets weren’t clean.
Many patients are still being placed in mixed sex wards, despite the government’s drive to abolish the practice. More than one in five respondents (22%) said they shared their room or bay with someone of the opposite sex. The worst was St Mary’s Trust, Paddington, London, where 61% of patients experienced mixed sex accommodation.
The percentage of patients saying they waited more than four hours to be admitted from emergency departments fell from 34% in 2002 to 25% last year. But fewer patients are being admitted within an hour (32%, compared with 43% in 2004).
Four in five (80%) always had confidence in their doctors, but 29% said their doctors often or sometimes talked in front of them as if they weren’t there. A third (33%) had been given conflicting advice from different members of staff.
Gill Morgan, chief executive of the NHS managers’ organisation the NHS Confederation, said the discrepancy between the perceptions of patients and those of the general public was largely due to the fact that the public often had no direct experience of the NHS but got its views from the national media, which tend to focus on bad news.
She said, “If you ask them [the public] about their local service it tends to be closer to the patient perspective, but if you ask them about the national picture they will say it’s terrible. The NHS is also unique in that its biggest critics are the people who work in it.”
Survey of inpatients 2005 is available at www.healthcarecommission.org.uk.