Help and support
Find answers to some of the frequently asked questions about the survey. If you can’t find the answer you are looking for, or need further information, please contact us.
You have been invited to take part in the survey
- Telephone: 0300 311 22 33;
- Email: england.contactus@nhs.net;
- Post: NHS England, PO Box 16738, Redditch, B97 9PT.
- england.insight-queries@nhs.net
- england.dpo@nhs.net
Your answers are put together with the answers from other people who take part and used to help understand and improve people's experiences of cancer care services. The results will be published on this website. Nobody will be able to identify you in any results that are published.
By participating in the survey, you give permission for us to send your survey response data to the National Disease Registration Service (NDRS) at NHS Digital where it will be included in the cancer registry (you can find out more at www.ndrs.nhs.uk). The NDRS will link your survey responses to your health data using your NHS number date of birth and postcode. Survey responses linked to data about individual patient’s diagnosis, care and treatment can be used by the NHS and researchers to support the planning of cancer services and other research. NHS Digital take great care to keep the information they hold about people confidential and, as with other medical records, strict ethical and security safeguards are in place and access is strictly controlled.
Cancer registration data, including your survey responses, may be shared with the NHS and researchers through the Data Access Request Service (DARS). DARS makes sure that access to data is according to strict data protection laws and that such data sharing will be of benefit to health and social care.
For more information on how NHS England use the survey results to improve cancer services please refer to the 'How will NHS England use my answers to the survey?' section. If you want more information about how we handle CPES response data you might find NHS England’s Privacy Notice useful: (www.england.nhs.uk/publication/nhs-englands-privacy-notice/). The Privacy Notice has a section titled: Those completing surveys or questionnaires which includes information about CPES.
The survey results are used to understand patient experience and to improve cancer services across England.
NHS England will not receive your name and full address, only your answers to the survey alongside your NHS number, postcode and date of birth. You will not be identified personally by NHS England.
Understanding differences in people’s experiences
Within NHS England, the results will be looked at to understand differences in people’s experiences, for example, to see if people answer differently depending on their ethnic group or their type of cancer. This will help to identify where improvements are most needed and for which groups, communities or populations.
Evaluating the new Rapid Diagnostic Centres
Rapid Diagnostic Centres (RDCs) have been introduced into the NHS to get people diagnosed as early and as quickly as possible, for all patients with cancer symptoms or suspicious test results. The survey results will be linked to data from RDCs using NHS number, postcode and date of birth, to make sure that records are matched correctly but not to identify any individual person.
This will help NHS England to understand how people experience cancer care and treatment when they have been diagnosed via RDC services, and how to make improvements to RDCs in the future. More information on the RDC Programme is available here: https://www.england.nhs.uk/cancer/early-diagnosis
You are a NHS provider running the survey
- Secure continuous improvement by building on the results of previous surveys and enable local providers and Cancer Alliances to assess their performance improvement with other providers.
- Enable commissioners to assess local improvements in cancer patient experience.
- Provide NHS England and NHS Improvement with an up to date overview of cancer patient experience across England.
- Enable patients to make informed choices about where to go for cancer treatment.
- Provide NHS England and NHS Improvement with an up to date overview of cancer patient experience variation across England.
- You will receive a bespoke report, where over 20 responses are received, on your trust’s cancer patients’ experience, broken down by cancer type grouping.
- You will be able to benchmark your cancer services within your trust and nationally.
- You will receive a free-text report providing automated semantic and sentiment analysis of written comments received as part of the survey.
- The results will help your trust to meet the requirement to measure patient experience as set out in the Peer Review Measures for Cancer.
- The results could help your trust to populate the Quality Accounts.
- The results will help inform the commissioning of local services.
- Attend one of the webinars being held in August.
- Confirm the expected date of submitting your patient list when prompted by Picker.
- Encourage your cancer leads to support this survey.
- Ensure your patient list is submitted within plenty of time to be approved by the start of fieldwork
- Ensure your Information Systems teams respond to data queries from Picker within 2 days.
- Commit to using the survey results to drive further improvement.
You want to provide feedback outside of the survey
Specific complaints can also be made through the Trust where you received your care. Each Trust has a member of staff responsible for complaints who will try to resolve the matter with you.
If you would prefer to give anonymous feedback you could ask staff at the hospital for information about how to give feedback using the Friends and Family Test (FFT). The FFT is designed to be a quick and easy way to give anonymous feedback that will go directly to the staff providing your care.
Alternatively, you can contact NHS England:
- Email: england.contactus@nhs.net with "For the attention of the complaints team" in the subject line
- Phone: 0300 311 22 33