Mental health remote consultations: appointment survey

What is this resource?

This is a free NHS appointment survey for comparing the quantity and quality of NHS appointments by phone, video, and actual visit.

The content was developed by a collaboration between:

• King’s College London
• South London & Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust

With advisory input from a multi-institutional partnership which includes:

• Health Innovation Network
• Academic Health Science Network for South London.
• Oxleas NHS Foundation Trust, and South West London
• St. George’s NHS Mental Health Trust

Experts by experience from:

• The NIHR Applied Research Collaborative South London
• King’s Health Partners

This partnership was formed in June 2020 to conduct a robust evaluation of the evidence of the impact of remote consultations in mental health to inform best practice and inform the delivery of services now and in the future.

The survey is designed to gather the following information:

• Type and number of remote NHS appointments
• Choice between phone call, video call, and actual visit
• Quality of remote NHS appointments (vs actual visit)
• User experience of technology for video calls
• Timeliness of remote appointments
• Impact of Covid-19 on preferences / perceptions
• Access and familiarity of technology for video calls
• Respondent characteristics for reviewing equity of service user experience.

This survey can be used by clinical / service leads for:

• Monitoring quantity and quality of remote NHS appointments.
• Collecting baseline data for developing project ideas in quality improvement.
• Comparing staff and service user experience and perceptions.

How to use this resource

1. Please email Dr Kia-Chong Chua for a copy of the survey template to be transferred to your institution’s Qualtrics account. For non-Qualtrics users, we provide the survey as a PDF document with details of the survey content and design so that it can be reconstructed in a different survey platform.
2. Focus on a specific service user group / care pathway. This will aid analysis of response rates and enable context-specific interpretations, as well as locally relevant ideas for quality improvement. We do not recommend convenience sampling across multiple clinical service (eg Trust-wide survey). See rationale here.
3. Consult local clinical team and service users to customise survey content.
4. Arrange for data management and analysis support.
5. Apply for institutional research ethics approval / exemption.
6. Communicate your intention to conduct the survey with the relevant staff and service users 1 week prior to go live date.
7. Select a 7-day timeframe (to ease recall burden).
8. Ensure that project team has resources for interviewer-administered survey to support service users for whom completing an online survey is challenging or not possible.
9. Present your findings to relevant Trust Boards, staff, and service users.
10. Develop and share quality improvement action plan.