Implementing Patient Experience

Patient-reported experience measures (PREMs) are questionnaires that systematically capture a patient’s experience of treatment and care they have received. This can include questions about whether the patient felt cared for, whether information was easy to access, and aspects of clinician-patient interactions.

PREMs are typically used to capture one-off patient experiences in a range of health care settings, enabling analysis of trends in experience scores within and between health services over time.

Patient stories provide detailed feedback of people’s experiences of health care, in the context of their life and the larger health system. Organisations can use these to examine the impact and outcomes of consumer experiences in healthcare.

See WA Health resource on collecting patient stories for more information: Patient Stories: A toolkit for collecting and using patient stories for service improvement in WA Health.

Focus groups use discussions from groups of people to generate information. They are useful for collecting data on patient experience because they:

• Gather in-depth information
• Build on ideas
• Focus on the experience of what people think and feel
• Generate consensus rather than diversity of opinions
• Are flexible
• Involve face-to-face interaction
• Are less time intensive than one-on-one interviews
• Cost effective

See an Agency for Clinical Innovation resource on planning and conducting patient experience focus groups for more information: Guide for Participant experience focus groups: facilitation guide.

Interviews can be used to assist patients to complete PREMs, such as AHPEQS. Methods such as face-to-face interviews or Computer Assisted Telephone Interviews are useful in collection of patient experience data, especially in reaching specific priority populations such as people from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) backgrounds, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and paediatric patients.

The Australian Hospital Patient Experience Questionnaire Set (AHPEQS) is a free survey used by hospitals and healthcare services to ask recent patients about their experiences of treatment and care. It is a survey developed by the Commission and is based on the aspects of treatment and care that patients in Australian hospitals and healthcare services have told us are most important to them. 

AHPEQS offers a survey that:

• Was developed and tested based on what is important and meaningful to patients and consumers in Australia  
• Is quick to complete and simple to understand
• Can be used by health service organisations and governments to identify and further investigate problems with safety and quality from the patient’s perspective.   

AHPEQS 

The AHPEQS ask patients to consider short statements about events that occur during health care. These are events that consumers told us are important to their experience of health care.

The statements are worded from the patient’s perspective. The patient marks one response which best reflects how often the statement was true during their most recent healthcare experience.

1. Most questions give the option of answering ‘always’, ‘mostly’, ‘sometimes’, ‘rarely’ or ‘never’.
2. My views and concerns were listened to
3. My individual needs were met
4. When a need could not be met, staff explained why (applies only if Question 2 was answered negatively)
5. I felt cared for
6. I was involved as much as I wanted in making decisions about my treatment and care
7. I was kept informed as much as I wanted about my treatment and care
8. It was clear to me that staff had communicated with each other about my treatment and care
9. I received pain relief that met my needs
10. When I was in hospital I felt confident in the safety of my treatment and care
11. I experienced unexpected harm or distress as a result of my treatment and care
12. My harm or distress was discussed with me by staff (applies only if Question 10 was answered in the affirmative)
13. Overall, the quality of treatment and care I received was (very good, good …)

AHPEQS is designed so that it can be implemented at any level of health service delivery:

• Across a whole state or territory
• Across a whole sector
• Across a whole private health organisation
• Across a hospital or day-stay clinic
• Across a group of hospitals or day-stay clinics
• In individual services, wards or departments.

AHPEQS can be used alone or with existing patient experience surveys, as a short additional module.

Supporting Resources

Download the Australian Hospital Patient Experience Question Set – see AHPEQS terms and conditions of use, and access to the AHPEQS questions and response options here.

Technical specifications – provides guidance and assists health services and facilities to implement the AHEQS in a consistent manner. 

AHPEQS Development and Testing Summary – provides background information on how AHPEQS was developed and tested

AHPEQS Resources – provides access to over 20 translations of AHPEQS, Easy English, Braille, and Parent-reported AHPEQS for paediatric services.

The Australian Hospital Patient Experience Question Set for parents and carers (AHPEQS-Parent) is a validated tool to collect parent and carer experience in the paediatric inpatient setting. 

The AHPEQS-Parent was adapted and validated by the Perth Children’s Hospital, part of the Western Australian Child and Adolescent Health Service. The AHPEQS-Parent questions were adapted from the AHPEQS and developed using a similar methodology to the AHPEQS. 

Supporting Resources

Download the Australian Hospital Patient Experience Question Set-Parent – see AHPEQS-Parent terms and conditions of use, and access to the AHPEQS questions and response options here.

For more information on the development of AHPEQS-parent, see Development of the Australian hospital patient experience question set for parents.

The Patient-Reported Indicator Survey or PaRIS Health Survey is an OECD-led initiative to strengthen the measurement of outcomes and experiences of healthcare services in primary care for people living with chronic conditions.

The survey focuses on Patient-Reported Experience Measures (PREMS), which measure how patients experience health care and refers to practical aspects of care; and Patient-Reported Outcome Measures (PROMS), which measure how patients assess the results of the care they receive. Australia is one of over 20 countries participating.

PaRIS aims to fill a critical information gap in primary health care, by gaining insight into areas such as: access to health care and waiting times, quality of life, pain, physical functioning, and psychological wellbeing.

Results from the survey will support local, national, and international learning and continued improvement of the way that healthcare providers deliver care and the primary health care system.

For more information see the Commission’s PaRIS webpage.

Resources

> Patient experience measurement in primary health care – Literature review – provides an overview of the current approaches, tools and uses of patient experience in the primary care sector.