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Patient-Led Assessments of the Care Environment (PLACE)

PLACE assessments will provide motivation for improvement by providing a clear message, directly from patients, about how the environment or services might be enhanced.

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Good environments matter. Every NHS patient should be cared for with compassion and dignity in a clean, safe environment. Where standards fall short, they should be able to draw it to the attention of managers and hold the service to account. PLACE assessments will provide motivation for improvement by providing a clear message, directly from patients, about how the environment or services might be enhanced.

The assessments involve local people (known as patient assessors) going into hospitals as part of teams to assess how the environment supports the provision of clinical care, assessing such things as privacy and dignity, food, cleanliness and general building maintenance and, more recently, the extent to which the environment is able to support the care of those with dementia or with a disability.

Recruitment and training of patient assessors is the responsibility of those organisations undertaking assessments.

The assessments take place every year, and results are published to help drive improvements in the care environment. The results show how hospitals are performing both nationally and in relation to other hospitals providing similar services.

Note that PLACE assessments focus exclusively on the environment in which care is delivered and do not cover clinical care provision or how well staff are doing their job.

PLACE assessment forms and supporting guidance documents

Following discussion with the PLACE Policy Team, PLACE 2024 will now run from Monday 2 September to Friday 6 December 2024 (an extension of 2 weeks from the original date).

Please contact us as soon as possible at [email protected] if you require an account for our collection portal (EFM) or would like to be added to the contact list. If any previous contacts or persons with PLACE accounts have left your organisation, please also let us know.

All assessments must be completed with data committed via the EFM-Information system. You can log into EFM now to check that your sites are correct for this year and enter your site setup data.

Do not begin your assessments until the PLACE 2024 start date (2 September 2024). Any scores entered before then will be deleted.

NEW: Patient assessor volunteers

We have a number of NHS England staff who would like to participate in this year’s PLACE programme as patient assessors. We have provided a list in the 'Documents' tab of the PLACE module on EFM (EFM access required). Please take a look if you’re struggling with patient assessor recruitment, and feel free to contact volunteers for your area. The only stipulation is that assessors must not have worked for the organisation being assessed during the past two years (relevant details supplied).

The 2024 PLACE assessment forms are available to download below. These will enable those undertaking assessments to prepare themselves and to provide local training to patient and staff assessors.

The documents include both the assessment forms and a variety of guidance material on recruiting and training patient assessors. They also include local training materials and guidance for anyone wishing to become a patient assessor.

Assessment forms - PLACE-Lite 2024

The 2024 PLACE-Lite module will be launched at the same time as the main PLACE 2024 module. In the meantime, please use the 2023 PLACE-Lite module. There have been no substantive changes to the question set so the 2024 assessment forms can be used in conjunction with this module.

History

April 2013 saw the introduction of PLACE, which is the system for assessing the quality of the patient environment, replacing the old Patient Environment Action Team (PEAT) inspections. The assessments primarily apply to hospitals and hospices providing NHS-funded care in both the NHS and private/independent sectors, but others are also encouraged and helped to participate in the programme.

The PLACE collection underwent a national review, which started in 2018 and concluded in summer 2019. The question set has been significantly refined and revised, and guidance documents have been updated. The review ensures that the collection remains relevant and delivers its aims. As the changes have been extensive, it is important to note that the results of the 2019 assessments onwards will not be comparable to earlier collections.

Want to be a patient assessor?

The assessments give patients and the public a voice that can be in the drive to give people more influence over the way their local health and care services are run and in the way in which they are held to account.

Assessment teams are a collaboration between staff and patient assessors, with patient assessors making up at least 50 per cent of the assessment team. Anyone who uses the service can be a patient assessor, including current patients, their family and visitors, carers, patient advocates or patient council members. NHS foundation trust governors can also be patient assessors.

Staff working in a hospital cannot undertake assessments there as patient assessors, though they are able to act as patient assessors at hospitals in other NHS trusts or elsewhere. Similarly those who have recently left employment in a hospital/trust should not return as a patient assessor until a suitable period (normally two years) has elapsed.

If you are interested in becoming a patient assessor, please contact your local Healthwatch group or your local NHS trust's volunteer co-ordinator.

Last edited: 24 October 2024 8:44 am