WIREDGOV

An Accredited Official Statistics Publication

Scotland’s Chief Statistician today released the main findings of the 2023/24 Health and Care Experience survey.

Experience of General Practice and Out of Hours healthcare:

• 69% of people rated their overall experience of their General Practice as good or excellent: this is a slight increase since the last survey in 2021/22 (67%), but it is lower than the survey prior to that in 2019/20 (79%).
• 84% of people who needed to see or speak to a doctor / nurse quite urgently were seen within 2 working days: this is slightly lower than in 2021/22 (85%) and in 2019/20 (86%).
• 62% received face-to-face appointments at the General Practice: this is a large increase from 2021/22 (37%), but it is lower than in 2019/20 (87%).
• 73% of people rated their overall experience of Out of Hours healthcare as good or excellent: this is higher than in 2021/22 (67%), but it is lower than in 2019/20 (79%).

Experience of help, care and support:

• 63% of people rated their help, care or support services as good or excellent.
• 64% felt they were supported to live as independently as possible.
• 53% felt they had a say in how their help, care or support was provided.

Experience of caring responsibilities:

• 62% of carers feel they have a good balance between caring and other things in their life: this is slightly lower than in 2021/22 (63%) and 2019/20 (64%).
• 31% of people felt supported to continue caring: a slight increase compared to 2021/22 (30%), but lower than 2019/20 (34%).

Background

The Scottish Health and Care Experience Survey is a postal survey, which was sent to a random sample of people who were registered with a General Practice in Scotland, lived in Scotland, and were aged 17 and over on 25 September 2023. Over 107,000 people registered with a General Practice in Scotland responded to the survey.

The survey has been run every two years since 2009 and forms part of the Scottish Care Experience Survey Programme, which is a suite of national surveys which provide local and national information on the quality of health and care services from the perspective of those using them.

Questionnaires were sent out in October and November 2023 asking about peoples’ experiences during the previous 12 months.

Comparisons over time for the help, care and support section are not presented in this publication due to changes in the opening question to this section, which results in a different cohort of people answering this section when compared to previous years.

As with all surveys, Health and Care Experience Survey results are estimates, based on a sample of the population. Percentages and differences are only described as ‘higher/lower’ or ‘increase/decrease’ where statistical tests identify statistically significant differences. Where a difference is not statistically significant, it is described as being ‘similar to’, even if one figure appears higher or lower than the other.

The Health and Care Experience Survey is the data source for the National Performance Framework indicator on Quality of Care Experience.

This report presents the key national level findings from the HACE 2023/24 survey. Other outputs of the survey available on the Health and Care Experience Survey collection page are:

• An excel spreadsheet showing results at national level and broken down at Health and Social Care Partnership level, Health Board, General Practice Cluster and General Practice level.
• An excel spreadsheet with data used for the charts and tables in this report.
• A technical report with details of the survey design and methodology.

Official statistics are produced in accordance with the Code of Practice for Statistics.