European survey on access to healthcare

The European Patients' Forum (EPF) is launching a unique survey on access to healthcare. The survey was designed by patients and patient representatives, to gain knowledge about the experience of patients across diseases and European member states, looking at access to healthcare and treatment.

The survey will provide key information for the launch of EPF’s campaign on access to healthcare in 2017. ELF is not involved in this project, but we aim to share articles that may be of interest to the members of this group.

This survey aims to gain knowledge on the perception of patients across the European Union on access to healthcare. It looks at 5 dimensions of healthcare:

Availability – whether a healthcare service or product is available in the healthcare system of your country
Affordability – whether seeking healthcare causes financial hardship to patients.
Accessibility – whether there are barriers, other than financial (e.g. waiting lists, geographical barriers etc.), that stop patients from accessing healthcare
Adequacy – the quality of healthcare and involvement of patients in shared decision making with their healthcare professionals
Appropriateness – whether healthcare meets the need of different groups in the population

The survey has been designed specifically for individual patients with chronic and long term conditions, and their informal/family carers. There is no need for in-depth knowledge on healthcare to complete this survey, as questions are primarily about individual experience and there are no wrong or right answers.

Patient organisations have a key role to play in helping us reach out to individual patients by disseminating this survey to their network. Although we still need responses from all over the EU, we are particularly lacking responses in the following countries at this stage: Austria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Netherlands, Slovakia, and Slovenia.

The survey consists of 30 questions (most of which are multiple choices with tick box options) and takes on average 20 to 25 minutes to complete. While there is no opportunity to save your answer and come back to it later, you can find a pdf copy of the survey here if you would like to have some time to consider it before filling it. The deadline is 31 October 2016!

You can find the link to the survey here – please share this survey with your networks at the national level.