Patient Choice
MORI Social Research Institute and Birmingham and the Black Country Strategic Health Authority have published the results of research among local population and General Practitioners. The survey focuses on issues related to the Government's initiative to introduce more choice in the way patients get treated in the NHS.
MORI investigated the reputation of local hospitals in Birmingham and why people choose them, as well as assessing likely patient flow in the Choose and Book environment and what factors may influence choice. The research programme also included the GPs' perspective.
The results suggest people in Birmingham hold private sector hospitals in high regard and that the NHS is perceived as worse than the private sector on many aspects of care.
The results also demonstrated the substantive impact GPs will have on the direction of patient choice and revealed the differing information needs of the public and the practitioner regarding choice.
Technical details
General public survey
The MORI general public survey was carried by telephone, between 1-22 April 2005, and comprises of 1,201 interviews with residents of six local authorities in Birmingham and the Black Country Strategic Health Authority (BBC SHA).
Quotas were set by local authority and respondent age to ensure 200 interviews were achieved in every local authority and to match the age profile of respondents to the profile of those who have undergone elective surgery in the BBC SHA facilities in 2004. The data were not weighted and need to be regarded as a simple aggregation of district level case studies in which each district is given equal weight, not as a representative survey of BBC SHA residents.
GP survey
The MORI GP survey was carried by telephone, between 27 May and 8 June 2005, and comprises of 100 interviews with GPs working in six local authorities in Birmingham and the Black Country Strategic Health Authority. The survey design was informed by in-depth interviews with 10 GPs. Quotas were set to ensure at least 10 interviews in each of the six local authorities included in the survey. Data were not weighted.
