Patient Centered Measurement: Emergency Department Survey 2018

Description

The 2018 Emergency Department Survey asked patients about their health-related quality of life and their experiences with the quality of care and services received from one of 108 emergency department facilities in British Columbia.

The Survey was coordinated by the BC Office of Patient-Centred Measurement (PCM) on behalf of the BC PCM Working Group, a group that includes representation from the BC Ministry of Health and the seven Health Authorities.

The Survey included items from the following Patient Experience Reported Measures (PREMs) and Patient Outcome Reported Measures (PROMs).

View video presentation on these data below.

PREMs

The Emergency Department Patient Experiences with Care (EDPEC):

• EDPEC Discharged to Community Instrument (ED_DTC)
• EDPEC (Admitted Stand Along Instrument (ED_ADMIT:EDPEC_IP1 and EDPEC_IP2) (asked only if patient was admitted to acute care)
• BC Emergency Department questions (BCED)
• “Hello my name is” questions (QABED)
• Emergency Health Services questions (BCEHS)
• Patients who saw a doctor identifier (DR_SCREEN)
• BC’s Patient Safety Module
• Hand hygiene question bank
• Medication reconciliation question bank
• Office of the Seniors Advocate questions (OSA)
• BC’s Continuity Across Transitions in Care Module (CONT)
• Intravenous Vascular Access questions (IVT)
• BC Emergency Medicine Network questions (EMN)

The EDPEC is a survey designed to understand patient experiences of emergency department care and was selected as the core instrument for seeking feedback from patients who made use of BC’s Emergency Health Services System, including transport by ambulance. Two versions of EDPEC were included: The EDPEC Admitted Stand Alone Instrument (ED_ADMIT), which has questions specific to patients who were admitted to the hospital following their emergency department visit; and the EDPEC Discharged to Community Instrument (ED_DTC), which has questions for those who were discharged directly to the community.

PROMs

• Veteran’s Rand 12 (VR-12) Item Health Survey
  • Includes 8 principles of health domains: general health perceptions, physical functioning, role limitations due to physical problems, role limitations due to emotional problems, bodily pain, energy-fatigue, social functioning, and mental health.
• EQ-5D-5L (asked only of participations ≥13 years)

Exclusions

All fields from the survey are available for researcher request apart from identifiable information and data collected using the EQ-5D-5L measure. The BC PCM Working Group was given permission by the EuroQol Group to use the EQ-5D-5L as part of a side-by-side study with the VR-12 to inform decisions about a generic PROM instrument for use in the province of BC. The data collected using this instrument cannot be made available to researchers at this time.

Important additional information

• Since 2003, the BC Patient-Centred Working Group (PCMWG) has led BC's strategy for patient-centred measurement, using scientifically rigorous survey instruments that give people who use BC's health care services the opportunity to assess the quality and safety of the health care system from their perspective. Patients’ self-reports of their experiences (and more recently, since 2016, their health related quality of life/health care outcomes) are solicited using PREMS (patient reported experience measures) and PROMS (patient reported outcome measures).
• To date, province-wide coordinated sector surveys have been conducted in the Emergency Department sector, Long Term Care sector, Acute (inpatient) sector, Outpatient Cancer Care sector, and Mental Health and Substance Use sector. The results of past surveys are publicly available. These are large scale surveys with all locations where services are provided in BC included.
• The release of the Acute Inpatient 2016/17 survey is the first time researchers will have access to the results of the PCM surveys conducted between 2003 and 2018. The "raw" survey data will be available via Population Data BC to conduct secondary analyses and inform patient-oriented research. Data from the Acute IP 2016/17 survey has been released first, followed by data from the Emergency Department 2018 survey. The release of data from each sector will occur in conjunction with the availability of support materials.
• The Office of PCM wants to support researchers who are interested in exploring and using the PCM data. Researchers may contact Ben Chou at: bchou@providencehealth.bc.ca with questions, or if interested in receiving more information.

Data collection process

For the Emergency Department 2018 Survey, data was collected via the following process:

1. Data submission: Twice per month for the 3-month data collection period, emergency departments securely sent the selected survey vendor records of patients discharged from their facility. The sample data elements included with every patient record is included in the Data File Submission Manual. The survey vendor generated a random sample of patients from the “universe” of eligible patient records submitted. Eligibility required that the records included valid mailing addresses and phone numbers.
2. Patient notification: Prior to being contacted, patients were notified by mail within 1 week of receiving discharge records that they had been selected to receive a survey. The cover letter also provided a unique access code and URL for those who preferred to complete the survey online.
3. Survey administration: The surveys were then conducted by phone as an interview or self-completed online. All phone-based surveys were completed using computer-assisted telephone interview (CATI) and used standardized interview scripts and prompts. All surveys, both online and phone, were available in the following languages: English, Chinese, Punjabi, Korean, French, Spanish, German and Vietnamese.
4. Data Collation: Patient’s survey responses were entered into a secure database and collated by the survey vendor.

The survey vendor was required to demonstrate compliance with the BC Freedom of Information and Protection Privacy Act and continues to be subject to the independent oversight of the BC Information and Privacy Commissioner. A Privacy Impact Assessment for the project was completed and approved by the Health Information and Privacy Operations Committee of BC on September 10, 2017.

Further information on the data collection process is available in the Emergency Department 2018 HealthIdeas Toolkit for Data Users.