Mental Health Trusts: Community Mental Health Service User Survey, 2007

<p>Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.</p>The National Patient Survey Programme is one of the largest patient survey programmes in the world. It provides an opportunity to monitor experiences of health and provides data to assist with registration of trusts and monitoring on-going compliance. Understanding what people think about the care and treatment they receive is crucial to improving the quality of care being delivered by healthcare organisations. One way of doing this is by asking people who have recently used the health service to provide feedback about their experiences. <br> <br> The results are primarily intended for use by NHS trusts to help them improve their performance. The results will be used by the Care Quality Commission as part of its Hospital Intelligent Monitoring. NHS England will use the results to check progress and improvement against the objectives set out in the NHS mandate, and the Department of Health will hold them to account for the outcomes they achieve. The Trust Development Authority will use the results to inform the quality and governance assessment as part of their Oversight Model for NHS Trusts.<br> <br> Each survey has a different focus. These include patients' experiences in outpatient and accident and emergency departments in Acute Trusts, and the experiences of people using mental health services in the community.<br> <br> <i>History of the programme</i><br> The National Patient Survey Programme began in 2003, and was then conducted by the Commission for Health Improvement (CHI), along with the Commission for Healthcare Audit and Inspection (CHAI). Administration of the programme was taken over by the Healthcare Commission in time for the 2004 series. On 1 April 2009, the Care Quality Commission (CQC) was formed, which replaced the Healthcare Commission.<br> <br> Further information about the National Patient Survey Programme may be found on the CQC <a href="http://www.cqc.org.uk/public/reports-surveys-and-reviews/surveys" title="Patient Survey Programme">Patient Survey Programme</a> web pages.<br> <br>The <i>Community Mental Health Service User Survey, 2007</i> was designed to provide actionable feedback to each participating NHS trust on patients' views of the mental health care they had received, as well as providing CHAI with patient-focused indicators to feed into the 2006-2007 annual health check for mental health trusts. The survey was carried out in all mental health trusts, combined mental health and social care trusts, and PCTs responsible for providing mental health services in England. Only one trust providing such services did not take part in the survey. This was because it has insufficient numbers of service users on its Care Programme Approach (CPA) register to enable its inclusion.<br><B>Main Topics</B>:<br>Topics covered included: relationships with healthcare professionals; medication; care and treatment; care plan; care review; support in the community; crisis care and standards.