Patient experience surveys for children's community health services: A scoping review

Improving Outcomes for Regional Families in the Early Years: Increasing Access to Child and Family Health Services for Regional Australia

Providing child and family health (CFH) services that meet the needs of young children and their families is important for a child's early experiences, development and lifelong health and well-being. In Australia, families living in regional and rural areas have historically had limited access to specialist CFH services. In 2019, five new specialist CFH services were established in regional areas of New South Wales, Australia. The purpose of this study is to understand the regional families' perceptions and experiences of these new CFH services. A convergent mixed-methods design involving a survey and semi-structured interviews with parents who had used the service was used for this study. Data collected include demographics, reasons for engaging with the service, perception, and experience of the service, including if the service provided was family centred. Triangulation of the quantitative and qualitative analysis uncovered three main findings: (i) The regional location of the service reduced the burden on families to access support for their needs; (ii) providing a service that is family-centred is important to achieve positive outcomes; and (iii) providing a service that is family-centred advances the local reputation of the service, enabling a greater reach into the community. Providing local specialist CFH services reduces the burden on families and has positive outcomes; however, providing services that are family-centred is key.

Parent-Reported Experience Measures of Care for Children With Serious Illnesses: A Scoping Review

OBJECTIVE

This scoping review aimed to: 1) identify parent-reported experience measures (PaREMs) for parents of children with serious illnesses from peer-reviewed literature, 2) map the types of care experience being evaluated in PaREMs, 3) identify and describe steps followed in the measure development process, including where gaps lie and how PaREMs may be improved in future efforts, and 4) help service providers choose a PaREM suitable for their service delivery setting and strategy.

DATA SOURCES

Relevant articles were systematically searched from PubMed, CINAHL, and Scopus EBSCOhost databases until June 10, 2021, followed by a manual reference list search of highly relevant articles.

STUDY SELECTION

Abstracts were screened, followed by a full-text review using predetermined inclusion and exclusion criteria.

DATA EXTRACTION

A standardized data extraction tool was used.

DATA SYNTHESIS

Sixteen PaREMs were identified. There were large variances in the development processes across measures, and most have been developed in high-income, English-speaking Western countries. Most only assess the quality of acute inpatient care. Few measures can be used by multiple service providers or chronic care, and many do not capture all relevant domains of the parent experience.

CONCLUSIONS

Service providers should integrate PaREMs into their settings to track and improve the quality of care. Given the multidisciplinary nature of pediatric care and the often-unpredictable disease trajectories of seriously ill children, measures that are applicable to multiple providers and varying lengths of care are essential for standardized assessment of quality of care and coordination among providers. To improve future PaREM development, researchers should follow consistent and methodologically robust steps, ideally in more diverse sociocultural and health systems contexts. Future measures should widen their scope to be applicable over the disease trajectory and to multiple service providers in a child's network of care for a comprehensive evaluation of experience.