PLACE: Patient-Led Assessments of UK Healthcare Environments

Patient-Led Assessments of the Care Environment (PLACE) replaced the Patient Environment Action Team (PEAT) programme from April 2013. Self-assessment teams, comprising at least 50% public patient assessors alongside NHS and private healthcare staff, evaluate the non-clinical care environment. These assessments focus on cleanliness, food, hydration, and the provision of care with privacy and dignity.

Use Cases

• Benchmarking facility cleanliness standards across NHS and private providers based on self-assessment scores.
• Analyzing correlations between environmental factors like food and hydration and patient satisfaction.
• Monitoring trends in privacy and dignity provisions within UK healthcare settings over time.
• Comparing assessment outcomes between facilities with different governance structures (NHS vs. independent).

Strengths

• Includes assessments from both NHS and private/independent healthcare providers.
• Assessment teams are required to have at least 50% members of the public as patient assessors.
• Data is provided under the OGL-UK-3.0 license, facilitating reuse.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment for large-scale modeling.
• Data may reflect geographic or institutional bias inherent to the UK healthcare system.

Provenance

Source

NHS Digital

Collection Method

Self-assessments conducted by teams of healthcare providers and patient assessors.

Time Range

Programme active from at least April 2013 onwards.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-07-08 13:33:11.769713; freshness should be verified.

Geography

United Kingdom (UK)