We are pleased to share the results from the 2022 Kidney PREM. We thank the 11,063 people living with kidney disease who took part. By sharing your views of your own kidney care, you are helping to shape improvements to care for all kidney patients.
What is Kidney PREM?
PREM stands for Patient Reported Experience Measures, and it is an annual, national survey of UK kidney patients that aims to:
- Help renal unit teams understand how patients feel about their experience of care
- Show where improvement can be made from a patient perspective
- Provide a national picture of people’s experience of care
Patients cannot be identified by their answers and will not be contacted by their renal unit directly about the survey.
Who runs the PREM surveys?
The Kidney PREM is led by Kidney Care UK, the UK's leading kidney patient support charity, and the UK Kidney Association (UKKA), the professional organisation for the UK kidney community.
Who can participate in PREM?
The survey is open to everyone living with chronic kidney disease who is aged 17 or over and attends a UK hospital kidney centre or satellite unit. This includes people who have a working kidney transplant. In 2022 the PREM survey was available online and in-units as a paper form.
What does the survey include?
The survey was co-designed by patients, clinicians and researchers. As well as demographic questions that cover age, gender, ethnicity and treatment, the survey includes questions relating to 13 key themes that patients have identified as being important to them:
- Access to renal team
- Support
- Communication
- Patient information
- Fluid and diet
- Needling
- Tests
- Shared decision making
- Privacy and dignity
- Scheduling and planning
- How the renal team treats you
- Transport
- The environment
Patients are asked to rate their experience on a scale of 1-7 where 1 is the lowest and 7 is the highest. Average scores are reported for each question and for each centre.
What is new in the 2022 PREM?
For the first time ever, participants were also asked whether English was their primary spoken language.
Additionally, the Paediatric PREM (PPREM) was launched in 2022 to run alongside the regular PREM survey. The PPREM was open to children and young people with chronic kidney disease (CKD) aged 12 years or older, and parent/carers of children and young people of all ages, with every centre in the UK contributing.
What are the key headlines from the 2022 Kidney PREM?
Overall experience continues to be rated highly, with an overall score of 6.25 out of 7 for patient care.
The following areas of experience score highly: Privacy and dignity (6.41), Access to the team (6.34), Patient information (6.32).
The following areas of experience score lowest: Transport (5.59), Sharing decisions (5.55), Support (5.78).
How does this compare to previous years?
- Compared to last year, people’s overall experience of care has risen slightly to 6.25 out of 7 in 2022, from 6.24 out of 7 in 2021.
- Privacy and dignity (whether patients felt their dignity was respected and they had adequate privacy) has also increased slightly since last year to 6.41 out of 7, from 6.40 out of 7 in 2021.
- While it’s still a lower scoring theme, Support (including medical issues, other concerns, and accessing patient support groups) has also improved since last year to 5.78 out of 7, from 5.73 out of 7 in 2021.
- Experience of transport (including the time to travel to the kidney unit from home, provided vehicle suitability, and ability to return home in 30 minutes) has decreased since last year, to 5.59 out of 7 from 5.75 out of 7 in 2021.
- Sharing decisions about your care rose slightly but was still low scoring overall, rising to 5.55 out of 7 in 2022, from 5.54 out of 7 in 2021.
- Patient information also fell slightly, to 6.32 out of 7 in 2022, from 6.35 out of 7 in 2021, but remained one of the highest scoring themes overall.
You can see how the average scores for each theme have changed since 2020 in the graph below.
What other comments did people make?
In total, 2,376 people provided comments about their experience of kidney care. 92.9% of participants gave consent for their comments to be passed back to their kidney centre.
The 2022 Kidney PREM Comments Report follows the 13 Kidney PREM themes, with How the Renal Team Treats You receiving the highest number of comments (1,136).
A total of 64% of comments under this theme were positive, focusing on comments about staff and thanking them for their care and dedication, as well as mentioning role specific staff members positively.
How can I find my kidney centre’s results?
See the results of all centres combined in:
If you would like to look more closely at the data for your centre or unit, this can be seen on the Kidney PREM portal where you can search the results by question, year, and hospital.
We recommend you ask your kidney team about your centre’s PREM results and find out if they are creating an action plan for improvement and how to get involved if you would like to.
To keep up to date with the latest news and information, including the Kidney PREM, please sign up to hear from Kidney Care UK.