New report reveals state of person centred care in the NHS in England 

The NHS is committed to ‘making the patient king’ – but how person centred is the health service in England? A new report by Picker brings together, for the first time, the findings from the national patient and staff experience programmes we are commissioned to deliver on behalf of the Care Quality Commission and NHS England.

It maps their results against the eight Picker Principles of Person Centred Care to assess the state of patient and staff experience in the NHS in England.  

The government’s ambitious Ten Year Plan for Health, published in June 2025, set out a clear intention to amplify the patient voice, expand patient choice, and to empower patients as part of NHS reform, while acknowledging the central role of NHS staff – and the importance of supporting their development and wellbeing – in delivering this blueprint for the future.   

Collating the findings from nine national surveys of NHS patients and staff, this report provides an overview of results that are often viewed in isolation. It identifies common themes and areas of variation in patient and staff experience at a time of significant change in the NHS, both locally and nationally, and when NHS England is seeking to explore the future infrastructure of patient experience measurement to align with the priorities of the Ten Year Plan.  

This report finds that patients tend to rate their care positively – although considerably less so in community mental health and accident and emergency settings – and feel that staff treat them with respect. But overall ratings can mask areas for improvement: for example, patients suffered negative impacts from long waits to access services, and experienced problems in continuity and communication. For their part, staff reported pressures at work and challenges in coordinating work across teams. 

Resolving the issues raised by patients and staff to improve experience and to deliver high quality person centred care for all, will require a commitment to engagement and co-production with diverse groups of patients and staff. Throughout the report, we highlight examples of existing best practice in improving patient and staff experience, linking to winners and runners up from our Picker Experience Network (PEN) Awards 2025.  

Our report concludes with eight recommendations for the Department of Health and Social Care to improve the state of person centred care in the NHS, focused on:  

• Listening to and acting on patient voice,  

• Embedding person centred care; and,   

• Filling key gaps identified in the report.  

Commenting on the report, Chris Graham, Chief Executive of Picker, said:  

“Patient experience, voice, and person centred care are prominent in the Ten Year Plan for Health’s reform ambitions – a timely renaissance given that effectiveness and experience have been sidelined in favour of a focus on safety in recent years.  

“This focus on experience is welcome and something that we have long advocated for, but the devil will be in the detail. As plans to close Healthwatch England and its local branches suggest, there are differing views on how patient voice should be sought and heard. 

“This report brings together a wealth of evidence to demonstrate where NHS care needs to improve to better meet people’s needs and preferences. To support this goal, we have set out recommendations for the Department of Health and Social Care: these are designed to ensure that patient empowerment is deeply embedded as core business in the health service of tomorrow. We call for their adoption to help create a service that offers high quality person centred care for all, always.” 

Notes to editors

• For media enquiries, please contact Picker’s Marketing and Communications team at [email protected], or phone: 01865 632 235. 
• This report collates the findings from nine national surveys commissioned by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) and NHS England and delivered by Picker; full details of these surveys are in Appendix 1 of the report. In total, these surveys include 891 questions and collected over one million responses (232,644 from patients and service users, and 799,146 from substantive and bank NHS workers).
• All insights in this report were collected in 2024 and 2025, with results published between November 2024 and November 2025.
• Picker’s eight Principles of Person Centred Care are available on our website: https://picker.org/who-we-are/the-picker-principles-of-person-centred-care/.
• The Picker Experience Network (PEN) Awards are held annually to celebrate examples of best practice in patient and staff experience and using data to drive change. Details of the winners in 2025 and how to enter in 2026 are available on the PEN website: https://patientexperiencenetwork.org/awards/

Picker’s team of researchers and data scientists are available to support organisations in understanding, measuring, and using workforce and user experience. For queries about our services or to request a call, please contact [email protected].