Background: The Health Service Executive’s (2016) “Framework for Improving Quality in our Health Service” positions patient experience as one of three key quality improvement outcomes. While it is widely accepted that reducing health inequalities is vital to quality improvement in healthcare, the HSE framework does not address health inequalities in relation to patient experience or quality improvement more broadly. The patient experience of public acute healthcare in Ireland is measured using the National Inpatient Experience Survey. In response to this gap in the HSE quality improvement framework and stakeholder feedback, the survey team, the National Care Experience Programme, identified a need to redesign the survey to better capture information about marginalised communities and inequalities in patient experiences of hospital care in Ireland and thereby better inform quality improvement plans to reduce health inequalities.
Aim: This project aims to facilitate the co-design of strategies for integrating considerations of health inequality into the National Inpatient Experience Survey.
Work Packages: This project consists of three complementary work packages. The first work package involves a systematic review of how health inequality has been conceptualised and measured in international patient experience surveys. The second work package involves focus groups with members of marginalised communities to collect experiences of inequality in inpatient care. The results of these work packages will inform the third work package – a co-design process involving workshops with people from marginalised communities and staff who collect or use data from the National Inpatient Experience Survey focused on developing adaptations to the National Inpatient Experience Survey that would improve its accessibility and its sensitivity to health inequalities.
Impact: This project will inform the consideration of health inequalities during the planned redesign of the National Inpatient Experience Survey to increase participation, enhance data quality, and ultimately facilitate quality improvement interventions to reduce health inequalities.