Patient experience desk researchOECD PaRIS
Measure ongoing care and its impact
PaRIS is an OECD international survey programme for people aged 45 years and over living with chronic conditions and managed in primary care. Unlike hospital instruments, it was not designed chiefly to tell one hospital which part of a stay to fix. It combines patient-reported experiences of care with patient-reported outcomes, so the question is not only whether a visit went well but whether ongoing care is working for the person.
Best question it answersHow do we measure the impact of care over time, not just visit or service satisfaction?
What it teachesLongitudinal-care lens: move beyond visit satisfaction to whether care is coordinated, person-centred, trusted, and supports self-management over time.
The problem it was built to solve
Countries lacked comparable patient-reported information about primary care for people with chronic conditions. PaRIS was built to fill that gap by developing and implementing common indicators for outcomes and experiences that matter to people, alongside information about primary-care practices.
Its intended result is broader than an episode-level service score: it can show which care experiences, patient circumstances, practice characteristics, and system contexts are associated with better health, well-being, self-management confidence, and trust. Those patterns can guide strategic priorities, but they do not by themselves prove that one factor caused the other. OECD PaRIS Programme Page and Does Healthcare Deliver?: Results from the Patient-Reported Indicator Surveys (PaRIS)
How it works
Cycle 1 collected data from more than 107,000 patients in more than 1,800 primary-care practices across 19 countries. It uses a patient questionnaire and a primary-care-practice questionnaire; the patient questionnaire covers outcomes, experiences, capabilities, health behaviours, and personal characteristics. Cycle 2, covering 2025 to 2030, is in development.
This design produces a different kind of result from HCAHPS, e-Satis, or LUP - which chiefly produce an episode or service diagnostic that a hospital can act on locally. OECD PaRIS Programme Page and OECD's PaRIS data and methods report
What it teaches us
Fair comparison
PaRIS shows that fair comparison can require more than one questionnaire. Its international design links patient experience and outcomes to primary-care-practice characteristics, patient capabilities, behaviours, and sociodemographic context. The lesson is not that every programme needs the same breadth, but that a score on ongoing care needs context. OECD's PaRIS data and methods report
Programme design and architecture
PaRIS is a measurement system, not simply a patient survey. Countries jointly develop and standardise indicators; the programme combines a patient questionnaire, a practice questionnaire, common data resources, and stakeholder structures involving patients, professionals, experts, and policymakers. OECD PaRIS Programme Page
Scope of measurement
PaRIS deliberately moves beyond an isolated episode. On the experience side, it examines an ongoing primary-care relationship and therefore approaches journey and pathway measurement; on the outcome side, functioning, well-being, and health-related quality of life extend toward life impact.
Its organisational focus is the primary-care practice and the wider system context, not a linked measurement of every provider in a person's care pathway. Its distinctive result is therefore explanatory rather than service-diagnostic. OECD's PaRIS data and methods report
Question design
The PaRIS framework treats access, comprehensiveness, continuity, coordination, safety, people-centredness, self-management support, trust, and overall perceived quality as experience constructs. It places these beside outcomes such as symptoms, functioning, self-reported health, and health-related quality of life. The lesson is to measure experience and outcomes as related but different constructs, rather than calling every patient-reported measure “satisfaction.” OECD's PaRIS data and methods report
Timing and actionability
PaRIS is designed for population-level understanding and international learning, not for a ward or clinic to resolve an individual patient's problem in real time. Its value comes from showing patterns in ongoing care and outcomes. OECD PaRIS Programme Page
Digital and technology
The available programme sources describe questionnaires, public-use data, and shared data infrastructure, but do not establish a distinctive digital feedback or analytics model as the core transferable feature. PaRIS's technology lesson is limited: multi-country patient-reported measurement needs common data standards and usable data access, not merely an online survey. OECD PaRIS Programme Page
Development and validation
PaRIS was developed through a multi-year process: a development phase from 2017 to 2020, a field trial in 2021 and 2022, and the main survey from 2022 to 2023. The patient-questionnaire field trial involved 10,894 patients in 18 countries, and later research reports its cross-country development and psychometric evaluation. OECD's PaRIS Field Trial Report and PaRIS patient-questionnaire development and evaluation
Evolution and modernisation
PaRIS is moving from its first international cycle into a 2025-2030 second cycle. Its evolution is not simply a questionnaire refresh: it is an effort to make patient-reported outcomes and experiences part of sustained, internationally comparable primary-care measurement. OECD PaRIS Programme Page
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