Patient experience is a central dimension of healthcare
quality (IOM 2001; ASCO 2006; Ludwig et al. 2006; NHS
2013–2014). Consequently, measurement of patient experience
in large nationwide samples of patients is becoming
common practice in several countries. For example, in the
United States, the Hospital Consumer Assessment of
Healthcare Providers and Systems survey measures the
experience of over a million hospital patients every year
(Goldstein et al. 2005; Medicare.Gov 2014). A potential
barrier in translating patient experience information into
improvement actions is that data often relate to patients
with a wide spectrum of conditions. Patients with cancer,
in particular, have very different care pathways compared
with other inpatients with non-neoplastic disease (e.g.,
elective surgery patients or those with exacerbations of a
chronic disease). Therefore, experience surveys of patients
with cancer are increasingly being considered in different
countries (Iversen et al. 2012; Evensen et al. 2013;
Garfinkel et al. 2013).