Results calculation

Patient-Led Assessments of the Care Environment (PLACE) scores are presented as percentages, but the marks allocated, and the maximum possible marks, are also published.

The purpose of PLACE scores is to identify areas where improvements could be made, rather than for comparison of sites or year on year differences. It is intended that areas for inspection are rotated on an annual basis if the sites are sufficiently large so that over time every part is covered.

Due to the widely variable nature of healthcare environments, each site will answer a slightly different set of questions depending on the type and number of facilities available, both in terms of number of scorecards filled out and questions responded to. In addition, some questions have ‘not applicable’ options, and these will not count in the score calculation. Questions not answered do not count towards the maximum score that can be achieved, so the final percentage score is made on a different basis for every site and organisation.

There were major changes in PLACE in the 2019 and 2026 question sets, PLACE scores in between 2019 and 2025 are comparable but should not be compared to pre-2019 results or results from 2026 or beyond.

Care should be exercised if making comparisons with anything other than responses to individual questions as the wards, areas and questions included in a PLACE assessment may vary from year to year.

There are different types of questions used in PLACE assessments: Pass/Fail; Pass/Qualified Pass/Fail; Yes/No; Multiple Choice (covered in the next section).

The allocation of scores is as follows:

Pass   = 2 points

(Qualified pass = 1 point)

Fail     = 0 points

Yes answers = 2 points

No answers   = 0 points

Questions that are not applicable to the healthcare environment being assessed are not scored (that is, they don’t count towards the total possible points).

Some questions are not scored for other reasons, for example, being only for information to define which following questions are applicable.

In all cases the top score is 2 and the bottom score is 0.

Scores for intermediate points on the scale depend on the number of options. Usually there are equal divisions but for a very small number of questions where there is unequal divisions or some options may have the same score (for example two zeros for equally undesirable options, or two middle scores). In this case, the scores for the other questions are spread equally across the remaining points.

The results at site level for each of the six categories or ‘domains’ (cleanliness; condition, appearance, and maintenance; privacy, dignity, and wellbeing supportive environments; food and hydration; dementia-friendly environments; disability-supportive environments) are expressed as a percentage score. The food scores are broken down into organisational food, food service and ward food (and in combination make up the food domain).

The percentage is calculated by reference to the score achieved expressed as a percentage of the maximum possible score for that site and domain combination. The denominator for the calculation (the maximum possible score) will be different for each site, depending on the number of questions answered in total. The maximum possible score is the total number of boxes in which a response has been entered (excluding ‘not applicable responses and non-scoring questions) multiplied by 2 (2 being the maximum score for each question).

The online data collection system allocates each question response to the appropriate domain category / categories and calculates the score accordingly rounding only once where the final score ends in a fraction.

Scores are presented at site, organisation, site type and national level. Calculation of scores at organisation, site type and national level involves weighting the site scores by the number of beds.

The sum of [each site's score (points) multiplied by the number of beds in that site] divided by the total number of beds in all assessed sites 

The information showing which questions score towards each domain, together with their location (form, scorecard, and section, if applicable) can be found on the EFM system. Note that the ‘Patient Assessment Summary Sheet’ form, the ‘Ward first impression’ and the ‘Ward last impression’ sections in various forms do not have any scoring questions. 

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