Changes to the Primary Care Patient Experience Survey

Message from Health Quality & Safety Commission about the Changes to the national Primary Care Patient Experience Survey;

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Dear colleagues,

I am writing to update you on changes to the national Primary Care Patient Experience Survey.

New provider: Ipsos Limited
Cemplicity’s contract to deliver the survey data collection and reporting services expired at the end of 2019. The Commission and the Ministry were required to undertake an open, competitive procurement process for services from 2020 onwards. Ipsos Limited, a market and social research agency, was selected as the new provider. Ipsos is a leading provider of full-service patient experience research services in Australia and has delivered the UK GP survey since its inception 13 years ago.

No survey in February 2020 quarter
To allow for Ipsos to implement the new system the survey will not run in the February 2020 quarter. The survey will run again in May 2020.
 
New reporting portal
With the new system we will have a new reporting portal. This will operate in a similar way to the current portal, but we aim to make it more user-friendly and easier for you to identify great and poor patient experience and to use this for quality improvement.
Ipsos will provide guides and materials to support your teams’ use of the new reporting portal in advance of your need to use them. These will be offered in the weeks leading up to Survey Sample Week and when the first data release will be available.
Access to the current reporting portal will close on 30 January. The new portal will include your historic data. If you think you may need access to your comments or results between this date and when the new portal is available, we recommend that you download it from the current portal before 30 January.
 
Increasing Māori and Pacific participation
A key focus of Ipsos’s work will be increasing participation from under-represented groups (in particular Māori and Pacific peoples). This will be ongoing, but as a first step will include testing alternative invitation methods and translating the surveys into Te Reo Māori.
 
Participant helpline
Ipsos will provide a helpline that patients can contact if they have questions about the survey. This will be available via email and an 0800 number.
 
Questionnaire refresh
The Commission is also taking this opportunity to refresh the survey questions to ensure we are keeping up to date with approaches to patient care and the latest research around patient experience measurement.
 
Next steps
We will be in touch again closer to the time to let you know what you need to do to prepare for the May 2020 survey. Survey Sample Week will be 4 – 10 May 2020.
At this stage, current survey resources for practices such as survey flyers, posters and videos will remain the same. There will be no change to what your practice does to include patients in the survey and the patient preference fields in your patient management system will continue to function in the same way. The main change you need to be aware of is that your current portal will close on 30 January 2020 and you will have a new reporting portal from May 2020.

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