Patients have until July 25 next to complete the 2019 National Care Experience Programme.
All patients over 16 years-of-age or older who were discharged from a public acute hospital during May, having spent at least 24 hours in hospital, are eligible to participate in the survey.
The survey is a joint initiative by HIQA, the HSE and the Department of Health, to develop and implement surveys of Ireland’s health and social care services.
The results of the 2019 survey are due to be published in autumn.
The annual National Patient Experience Survey was launched in 2017. In 2017 and 2018, a total of 26,000 patients participated, making over 40,000 qualitative comments on the care they received in hospital.
HIQA said that while there was still room for improvement, the results of the 2018 survey showed that there had been some positive developments in hospital care, particularly in terms of discharge and care on the ward.
“The National Care Experience Programme has now been established to expand the survey to other areas of health and social care and capture the experiences of people who use these services.
The National Maternity Survey — Ireland’s first every national survey of maternity services — will commence in early 2020. This survey will capture the experiences of new mothers from prenatal and antenatal care through to postnatal care. Women who are aged 16 or older who give birth during the survey period will be invited to participate in the survey approximately three months after the birth of their baby.
Rachel Flynn, Programme Director of the National Care Experience Programme, said: “Listening to the experiences of people who use health and social care services is internationally accepted as a measure of the quality and safety of care. In Ireland we are moving towards a more patient-centred model of care, long advocated for by HIQA. The aim of the National Care Experience Programme is to empower people to share their experiences and facilitate them to become actively involved in their care.
“Patient experience surveys are a useful way of finding areas that need improvement in the delivery of healthcare and provide hospital managers with detailed information on how to fix these problems. It is by listening and learning from the experiences of patients that we can bring about effective and sustainable changes across the Irish health and social care systems.”
