Health and Care Experience Survey (2023-24)

The Scottish Government has a requirement to place a contract with an external service provider for the provision of the Health & Care Experience Study 2023. Making healthcare more person centred lies at the heart of the NHS Scotland Quality Strategy ambitions. The Scottish Care Experience Survey Programme has been designed to support this ambition by giving people the opportunity to comment systematically on their experience of healthcare and its impact on their quality of life. The programme comprises a suite of surveys, including inpatient, health and care, maternity and cancer care. The Survey is a biennial postal survey which first ran in 2009. The Survey, which originally focused on primary care services, was expanded in 2013 to accommodate questions on social care and carers, reflecting the move towards health and social care integration in Scotland, further refined in 2017 to reflect new policy priorities and reviewed in 2021 to reflect changes in service provision during the COVID-19 pandemic. The scope of the contract will be to undertake the survey fieldwork and the transfer of a clean data set. The initial survey pack will include a letter and an information leaflet in a range of languages. A reminder pack will be sent to people who had not responded to this initial letter after a couple of weeks. The reminder pack will include a reminder letter, an information leaflet and a paper copy of the questionnaire. This involves printing and posting the survey packs to around 550,000 to people registered with a GP practice in Scotland, which requires the services of an experienced survey contractor with specialist equipment. The survey contractor will be required to scan and capture the completed questionnaires, and carry out agreed validation checks on the data before securely transmitting a clean data set to the Scottish Government. There is no in-house facility to administer such a large volume of surveys. In order to encourage online completion of the Survey the Supplier will be required to setup an online version of the Survey and facilities to support other means of access to the Survey (including, but not limited to, telephone, textphone, Language Line service) and a telephone helpline.