The Scottish Health and Care Experience (HACE) Survey is a postal survey which was sent to a random sample of people who were registered with a GP in Scotland based on latest information available on 6 October 2021.  Questionnaires were sent out in November 2021 asking about people’s experiences during the previous 12 months.

The results of the latest survey were released on 10 May 2022. A national report with supplementary tables (external website), technical report (external website) and further information about this survey, including a copy of the questionnaire and reports from previous years, are available from the Scottish Government (external website).

The survey covers six areas of health and care experience:

• The GP practice
• Treatment or advice from the GP practice
• COVID-19
• Out of hours healthcare
• Care, support and help with everyday living
• Caring responsibilities

Levels of reporting available

• Scotland
• NHS board
• Health and Social Care Partnership (HSCP)
• GP cluster
• GP practice

Dashboards

Eight interactive dashboards are available and present the results from the 2022 survey along with time trends for all surveys since 2014, where questions are comparable. These eight dashboards can be accessed via the menu on this page.

Methodology

Weighting

Results at all levels of reporting are weighted to provide results which are more representative of the population. Details of the weighting methodology are available from the Scottish Government (external website).

The results in the 'About the respondents' dashboard are presented unweighted to provide information about the people who responded to the survey.

Statistical testing

Statistical comparisons are available.

• Results from local areas were compared to Scotland.
• Results from the 2022 survey were compared to the 2020 survey at Scotland, NHS board and Health & Social Care Partnership level where the same question was asked in both surveys.

Comparisons were tested at the five per cent significant level. Due to the large sample size, even small changes of less than one per cent may be statistically significant.

Percentages

Percentages quoted within this dashboard have been rounded to the nearest whole number. This means that they do not always add up to 100 in the charts shown.

Small numbers

The dashboards display the number of responses that the results are based upon. Results for questions have been suppressed where there were fewer than 20 responses as they may be unrepresentative and may risk identifying respondents. Where results are shown but the number of responses is small, care should be taken in interpreting these. At GP practice level, an interpretation warning is displayed when either fewer than 100 responses were received from patients registered with the practice, or the response rate was lower than 15%.

More information about the survey design, response rates and methodology can be found in the technical report (external website) available from the Scottish Government (external website).

Contact

For further information, please contact the survey team via:
email: patientexperience@gov.scot