2,409 voices, one promise — our 2026 patient experience report

Liz KeatingChief Patient Officer · Personal Homecare Pharmacy

NHMC Patient Experience Report 2026

About this survey. Every year we run the standard patient experience survey required by the National Homecare Medicines Committee (NHMC). It’s completed by patients anonymously and benchmarked against other UK homecare providers. This report covers responses for the year ending 21 May 2026 — 2,409 patients across 30+ NHS Trusts.

A note on the numbers

This edition corrects two things in how our dashboard presented the data, so the numbers here are a truer reflection of patient experience.

Every figure here reconciles to source. All scores were recalculated directly from the raw response export (2,409 records) and match the live dashboard to within rounding. Nothing has been adjusted upward — the headline simply reflects the correct metric and the corrected clinical base.

The story in one line

The closer a question got to the human touch, the higher patients scored us. The medication arrives complete, on time, and the person who hands it over treats them well. That is the foundation everything else is built on.

Year on year

From 2024/25 to 2026, all 19 questions on the NHMC patient experience survey moved up. Some by a fraction, several by a lot — with not a single regression across the whole instrument.

4.76

up from 4.56

+0.20

That’s a +0.20 point lift on a 5-point scale — a meaningful shift given the size of the sample. But the more telling story is in the spread: every section of the survey moved up.

Section 1 · Deliveries

If there’s one section worth printing on the wall, it’s this one. Every delivery question scored 92% or above. Every one.

97.7%

The single highest-rated question across the entire survey, with a mean of 4.86 and 89% of those 2,389 patients choosing the very top rating. In an industry where logistics often get outsourced and treated as a cost line, the human handover at the door is our most-loved touchpoint. That’s a hiring story, a training story, and a culture story — all in one number.

Section 2 · Customer Service

Our customer service team handled questions, queries, complaints and “just checking” calls from thousands of patients this year. The scores tell us something important about how people feel after putting the phone down.

The win

95.5%

Patients consistently tell us our team is warm. Q6 sits in the top tier of the whole survey, with a mean of 4.78.

The watch

85.2%

Still strong, but the lowest of our seven customer service questions (mean 4.49). A clear target for the year ahead — with a dedicated complaints workflow now live.

Section 3 · Hospital & Clinical

The hospital section is where homecare sits alongside the Trust. Patients rate the whole journey here — from the conversation in clinic to the support they receive when something needs sorting. The scores stay strong, and where they soften they point to touchpoints we can keep improving together with our Trust partners. Clinical scores, now corrected, are among our strongest.

94.0%

Q19 asks specifically about the homecare experience after the hospital touchpoints, and the score lifts back to 4.69 / 94.0% positive. We’ll keep working closely with Trust pharmacy teams on the joined-up moments — clearer contact pathways, smoother referrals, visible escalation — because when those parts of the journey feel seamless, every score in this section moves with them.

Section 4 · Clinical Support

Clinical support reaches 220 of our patients — those receiving a nursing service. The four clinical questions only appeared for those patients, so we’ve removed non-applicable responses from the base for the first time. The picture that emerges is excellent.

When clinical patients were asked their preferred future appointment format, 89 chose remote, 52 face-to-face, and 41 said either — the model patients want is hybrid.

In their own words

The scores tell us how patients feel. The free-text comments tell us why. A small selection, drawn directly from the feedback form, unedited.

“

Since being on this medication, no side effects. I feel I have got my life back. I have no pain whatsoever over these last 14 months. I am enjoying life as I had hoped to and embrace every minute of it. Thanks to you all.

Patient Chesterfield Royal Hospital NHS Foundation Trust

“

The service works perfectly. I’ve never had cause to contact customer service as the delivery experience is flawless and excellent.

Patient Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust

“

The PHP aspect of my treatment is first class.

Patient University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust

“

Anytime I call, really pleasant staff and always helpful. Always reliable and friendly, and within the time slot.

Patients Milton Keynes & Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trusts

What patients asked for

A 95% satisfaction score is not the end of the conversation. The free-text comments surfaced three themes that came up over and over — here’s what patients said, and what we’re doing about it.

1

“As I work during the day, I am finding day time deliveries extremely unhelpful as I have to take time off work to receive deliveries.”
— Patient, University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trust

Our response. We’re actively expanding our evening and Saturday delivery slots through 2026, starting with the postcodes where the patient mix is most working-age.

2

“When the pre-delivery text arrives I can plan my day. When it doesn’t, the whole thing falls apart — even when the delivery itself is on time.”
— Patient feedback theme, multiple Trusts

Our response. A revised notification pipeline now monitors text deliverability end-to-end, with automatic fallback to a call when the text fails. Patient Portal also shows live ETA from January 2026.

3

“The hospital can be slow to issue a repeat. A bit more buffer would mean less stress about running out.”
— Patient feedback theme, multiple Trusts

Our response. We’re trialling earlier reorder triggers with built-in buffer for hospital turnaround, alongside a Patient App nudge so the prompt sits in the patient’s pocket, not their post.

For NHS Trust partners

For commissioners and Trust pharmacy teams evaluating homecare, three numbers do the heavy lifting:

There’s no version of homecare excellence that doesn’t start with the basics — the right medication, complete, on time, handed over by someone the patient is glad to see. The opportunity now is to translate that excellence on the doorstep into excellence further up the pathway: in the clinic, in the hospital portal, in the moments before a delivery is even booked.

Closing thought

They didn’t have to. That they did — and that 95.6% of them rated their experience positively — is the strongest possible signal that homecare, when it’s done with care, is a service people actively want to talk about.

Want to talk?

If you’re a commissioner, Trust pharmacy lead, or partner evaluating clinical homecare, we’d love to walk through the detail with you. The full report and supporting data are available on request.

Start a conversation →Download the full report (PDF coming soon)

Personal Homecare Pharmacy is a GPhC-regulated clinical homecare provider serving NHS Trusts and pharmaceutical companies across the UK. This report covers the year ending 21 May 2026 and is prepared as part of our standing reporting commitment to the National Homecare Medicines Committee (NHMC).

See also: our build-up to Clinical Pharmacy Congress 2026 and our post-event highlights.

All scores in this report are drawn from the standard NHMC 19-question patient experience survey. Responses are anonymous; quotations are reproduced with NHS Trust attribution only.