Policy Hub
On 2 December 2008, the Department of Health (DH) published a report on the national patient choice survey for July 2008 accompanied by provisional headline results for the September 2008 survey.
The report details the final results of nearly 93,000 responses to the fourteenth national patient choice survey, commissioned to assess the implementation of choice at primary care trust (PCT) level.
It finds that 46% of patients recall being offered a choice of hospital for their first outpatient appointment in July 2008, compared with 45% in May and 30% in the first survey (May/June 2006).
Similarly, 47% of patients were aware before they visited their GP that they had a choice of hospital for their first appointment, up from 45% in May 2008 and 29% in the May/June 2006 survey.
Amongst the report's other findings, it emerges that 76% of patients were satisfied with how long they had to wait from the time their GP referred them to when they saw the hospital specialist. In addition, hospital cleanliness and low infection rates were selected most often (by 74% of patients) as a key factor determining hospital choice.
National patient choice survey July 2008 and provisional headline figures for September 2008