About the National Cancer Patient Experience Survey
The National Cancer Patient Experience Survey allows cancer patients to give feedback on the care they have received. This feedback is used to understand where care is working well and how NHS cancer services across England can be improved. Results from the survey are used by providers to improve the experience of cancer patients at a national, regional, and local level. The survey is run by Picker on behalf of NHS England.
This dashboard allows you to explore results from the survey.
Using this dashboard
Results are organised by reporting level. The navigation menu on the left allows you to select results at national, Cancer Alliance, Integrated Care Board, and NHS Trust level.
On each page, there are a set of filters allowing you to view the results of interest to you. The results can be filtered by survey year, geographical area, and cancer type, and can be broken down by patient demographics.
You can choose whether to view scores (summary positive scores available only for evaluative questions) or frequencies (which show each response option for each question). See 'How are questions scored?' below for more information on the scoring used for the survey.
Several features are included on each page within the dashboard:- Charts and tables: in most cases, results are presented in charts and tables. Charts typically take the form of bar or line charts. These are not included in cases where it is too complex to visualise the data, for example when splitting results by two breakdowns. The content of charts and tables can be controlled via the dropdown menus directly above them. Presented data for a given category can be hidden by clicking the label in the legends, and reshown by clicking it again or clicking the 'Reset Legend' button. The dropdowns vary by page. Descriptions of each are included in the relevant sections of this guide.
- Searching tables: Tables can be searched and filtered using the search box directly above the table.
- Downloading data from tables: Data from the tables can be copied to your computer's clipboard or downloaded as a CSV or Excel file for further use. This can be done via the buttons directly above the table.
- Downloading data from charts: Data from the charts can be downloaded via clicking on the “burger” icon in the top right-hand corner of the charts. This provides the option to download the chart in a variety of file formats, print it, or view it in full screen.
- Suppression: In some cases, data is “suppressed” - removing a value and replacing it with a symbol. Suppression occurs for two reasons: to ensure unreliable results based on very small numbers of respondents are not released, and to prevent individuals being identifiable in the data. More information on suppression can be found below under 'Why is data suppressed and how does it work?'.
More detail about what is included on each page is available below.
Survey pages
On this page are national results.
By using the 'Year' drop-down you can choose to see results for one year only or you can explore comparisons between the 2021 and 2022 results.
When comparisons between the 2021 and 2022 results are shown, patients residing outside England are not included. This is because the statistical significance tests use deprivation data, which is not comparable between England and other UK nations.
You can also look at results for different sub-groups. This can be for one year only or for comparisons between 2021 and 2022.
You can view one sub-group at a time (for example results by age) by using the 'Choose your first breakdown' drop-down. Or you can look at two sub-groups at a time (for example results by age and ethnicity) by adding a sub-group from the 'Choose your second breakdown' drop-down.
Please note that some sub-groups have small base sizes, so caution should be taken when interpreting the results.
Use this page to view year on year comparisons and sub-group breakdowns at individual Cancer Alliances.
Unadjusted results are presented as no comparison with other organisations is taking place. Adjusted scores enable more accurate comparisons between the scores of different organisations as they take into account the different patient profiles that organisations have. For more information on unadjusted scores see 'What are adjusted and unadjusted scores?'.
The 'Organisation' drop-down allows you to select the Cancer Alliance of interest.
By using the 'Year' drop-down you can see results for one year only or you can explore comparisons between the 2021 and 2022 results for the selected Cancer Alliance.
You can also look at results for sub-groups. You can view one sub-group at a time (for example results by age) by using the 'Choose your first breakdown' drop-down.
Please note that some sub-groups have small base sizes, so caution should be taken when interpreting the results.
Use this page for comparisons between Cancer Alliances. This is for 2022 results only.
The 'Organisation' drop-down allows you to select one or more Cancer Alliances of interest.
The data on this page uses adjusted scores and displays the 95% confidence interval. The adjusted scores enable more accurate comparisons between the scores of different organisations as they take into account the different patient profiles that organisations have.
For more information on how we compare organisations see 'What is the expected range technique used to compare organisations?'. And for more information about confidence intervals see 'What are confidence intervals?' below.
Use this page to view year on year comparisons and sub-group breakdowns at individual Integrated Care Boards.
Unadjusted results are presented as no comparison with other organisations is taking place. adjusted scores enable more accurate comparisons between the scores of different organisations as they take into account the different patient profiles that organisations have. For more information on unadjusted scores see 'What are adjusted and unadjusted scores?'.
The 'Organisation' drop-down allows you to select the Integrated Care Board of interest.
By using the 'Year' drop-down you can see results for one year only or you can explore comparisons between the 2021 and 2022 results for the selected Integrated Care Board.
You can also look at results for sub-groups. You can view one sub-group at a time (for example results by age) by using the 'Choose your first breakdown' drop-down.
Please note that some sub-groups have small base sizes, so caution should be taken when interpreting the results.
Use this page for comparisons between Integrated Care Boards. This is for 2022 results only.
The 'Organisation' drop-down allows you to select one or more Integrated Care Boards of interest.
The data on this page uses adjusted scores and displays the 95% confidence interval. The adjusted scores enable more accurate comparisons between the scores of different organisations as they take into account the different patient profiles that organisations have.
For more information on how we compare organisations see 'What is the expected range technique used to compare organisations?'. And for more information about confidence intervals see 'What are confidence intervals?' below.
Use this page to view year on year comparisons and sub-group breakdowns at individual NHS Trusts.
Unadjusted results are presented as no comparison with other organisations is taking place. adjusted scores enable more accurate comparisons between the scores of different organisations as they take into account the different patient profiles that organisations have. For more information on unadjusted scores see 'What are adjusted and unadjusted scores?'.
The 'Organisation' drop-down allows you to select the NHS Trust of interest.
By using the 'Year' drop-down you can see results for one year only or you can explore comparisons between the 2021 and 2022 results for the selected NHS Trust.
You can also look at results for sub-groups. You can view one sub-group at a time (for example results by age) by using the 'Choose your first breakdown' drop-down.
Please note that some sub-groups have small base sizes, so caution should be taken when interpreting the results.
Use this page for comparisons between NHS Trusts. This is for 2022 results only.
The 'Organisation' drop-down allows you to select one or more NHS Trusts of interest.
The data on this page uses adjusted scores and displays the 95% confidence interval. The adjusted scores enable more accurate comparisons between the scores of different organisations as they take into account the different patient profiles that organisations have.
For more information on how we compare organisations see 'What is the expected range technique used to compare organisations?'. And for more information about confidence intervals see 'What are confidence intervals?' below.
Understanding the survey results
Only evaluative questions in the questionnaire are scored. These are the questions that address the quality of the patient experience. The score shows the percentage of respondents who gave the most favourable response to a question.
For each evaluative question, responses are identified as positive, negative or neutral. Scores are calculated by dividing the number of positive responses by the total number of positive and negative responses. Neutral scores (e.g., 'Don't know / can't remember') are excluded from this calculation.
Some questions are descriptive, and others are 'routing questions', which are designed to filter out respondents to whom the following questions do not apply. These questions are not scored.
Adjusted scores allow for fair comparisons to be made between different organisations as these scores are adjusted to take into account the proportion of patients within five sub-groups: age, ethnicity, male/female/non-binary/other, cancer type, and Area-level deprivation (IMD quintile).
Adjusted data, together with expected ranges, should be used to understand whether the results for a specific organisation are significantly higher or lower than national results taking account of their patient population.
Unadjusted scores should not be used to make comparisons. They should be used to see the actual responses from patients relating to the organisation and also to track trends over time.
The scores for each organisation for each question are an estimate of the score from the population, based on the responses received. Assuming the sample is representative of the organisation, confidence intervals are a method of describing the uncertainty around these estimates.
We report 95% confidence intervals around the results. The 95% confidence interval is a way of describing how certain we can be about our estimates. If we were to repeat the survey 100 times with different groups of people, we would expect the 'true' score to be within the 95% confidence interval 95 times out of 100.
When a confidence interval is wide (a big difference between the lower and upper bound), there is uncertainty around the true value. If there is an overlap between the intervals around two different scores, it means we cannot be certain whether there is a difference between them.
Results are produced that show how each organisation scored for each evaluative question in the survey, compared with other organisations that took part. We do this by calculating the expected range.
This is the range we might expect the score for an organisation of a certain size to lie within if they are within the core of the distribution of performance between organisations (this allows for smaller sample sizes that may give a misleading view). As such, the organisations outside this range are flagged as outliers, performing above or below what is expected for most organisations.
This approach is designed to help understand the performance of individual organisations and identify areas for improvement. A full explanation of the methodology can be found in the Technical Document on the Survey instructions page.
Data is suppressed for two reasons: to ensure unreliable results based on very small numbers of respondents are not released, and to prevent individuals being identifiable in the data.
In cases where a result is based on fewer than 10 responses, the result has been suppressed. For example, where fewer than 10 people answered a question from a particular organisation, the results are not shown for that question for that organisation.
For organisations with an eligible population of 1,000 or fewer, data relating to the respondent and their condition has been suppressed where 5 people or fewer were in a particular category. In instances where only one has been suppressed, the next lowest category has been suppressed to prevent back calculation from the total number of responses. For a full list of the data which this applies to, please see the Technical Document on the Survey instructions page.