Patient-Led Assessments of the Care Environment (PLACE), 2024 - England

Statistics are released as soon as possible after collection. The formal collection period lasted between September and December 2024 and was then further validated before preparing the materials for publication. 

We work closely with our principal stakeholders (the Commercial Directorate at NHS England) to ensure that data meet the needs of data users. Feedback received during the collection is used to review the collection and guidance on an annual basis. A full review of the collection was conducted following publication of the 2018 collection to ensure that the PLACE programme remains fit for purpose and continues to deliver its aims and to meet user needs.

Known users of the PLACE data include:

Department of Health  

Information from the collection is used to brief Ministers, answer Parliamentary Questions, and provide responses to correspondence and to inform policy decisions around areas such as the patient environment and dementia strategy. 

Care Quality Commission  

Information from the collection is used in the CQC’s Intelligent Monitoring (IM) process. IM is an analysis used to inform the CQC’s new inspection programme about which trusts could be prioritised for inspection. 

NHS England  

Information from the collection is used for a range of purposes including: 

-Informing quality improvement programmes, including the daily care environment and nutrition

-Informing compassion in practice implementation in relation to privacy and dignity 

-Informing patient engagement work in terms of the level of patient involvement and related processes 

-Informing commissioners of best intelligence tools to guide healthcare contract decisions

Healthcare providers

-Healthcare providers use their scores to produce action plans on service improvement which are published locally. 

Others  

We believe other key users of the statistics will be: 

-Ministers and their advisers 

-Clinical Commissioning Groups 

-Healthcare providers to produce action/improvement plans and for benchmarking purposes 

-Students, academics and researchers 

-Individual citizens to support choosing their provider of healthcare

The collection exploits online technology to reduce the burden on organisations in completing and returning the data.

Providers also have the option of purchasing a mobile solution with which to directly enter data agreed by the assessing team on the day, which saves a significant amount of time entering data onto the online collection system. In 2019 NHS Digital also launched a free application which connects directly with the collection system, enabling the same direct entry of data during assessments and facilitating data saving where no signal is available (for later upload).

The collection was reviewed and approved by the Data Alliance Partnership Board (DAPB) part of the Data Standards Assurance Service (DSAS).

There is no person identifiable data (PID) in the PLACE collection.

Please see links below to relevant NHS Digital (now NHS England) policies:

Data

https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information

Data security and information governance:

https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/looking-after-information

Freedom of Information Process:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/contact-us/foi/

Codes of practice on confidential information:

https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/looking-after-information/data-security-and-information-governance/codes-of-practice-for-handling-information-in-health-and-care/code-of-practice-on-confidential-information