Statistics

We plan to discontinue the Scottish Inpatient Experience Survey: tell us what you think

September 15, 2026 by Lee Begbie No Comments | Category Health and social care

We recently reviewed our Care Experience Survey Programme, and as part of that work we are seeking views on a proposal to formally discontinue the Scottish Inpatient Experience Survey.

The survey was last conducted before the COVID-19 pandemic and has remained on hold since then. During this period, we have kept the survey programme under review and have engaged with Scottish Government policy officials and other stakeholders about priorities for statistics on health and care experiences.

The review highlighted the importance of ensuring the programme continues to meet user needs, address evidence gaps and support the development of more effective and timely approaches to collecting experience data.

Having considered the role of the Inpatient Experience Survey within the wider programme, we are proposing to formally discontinue the survey and its associated statistics. This reflects the fact that the survey has been paused for several years, there are currently no plans to repeat it. In addition, priorities within the wider patient and care experience evidence landscape have evolved, including a greater focus on developing and delivering the Health and Care Experience (HACE) Survey. This supports the community principle in the Service Renewal Framework of more care in the community, while there have been major changes to hospital care through new services like Hospital at Home.

We recognise that the Inpatient Experience Survey is currently the only source of national quantitative data specifically on inpatient experiences in Scotland. Alongside this, Care Opinion provides qualitative data on experiences. In addition, a programme of work is underway to develop a national Person Reported Outcome Measure (PROMs) and Person Reported Experience Measure (PREMs) platform, which will allow us to better understand the outcomes that matter to patients, how they experience services and support analysis of population-level data for service improvement purposes.

Before taking a final decision, we would like to hear from current and potential users of these statistics.

In particular, we would welcome your views on:

• whether you currently use, or have previously used, findings from the Scottish Inpatient Experience Survey
• how the survey findings have informed your work, decision-making, service improvement, research or analysis
• what impact, if any, discontinuing the survey would have on your organisation or area of work
• whether alternative data sources are available that meet your needs
• any evidence gaps that you believe would arise if the survey were formally discontinued

We would be grateful for any comments by Friday 16 October 2026.

Please send your response to PatientExperience@gov.scot.

We will review all feedback received before making a final decision and will publish our decision on the Scottish Government website.

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