The role that patients can play in improving the quality of healthcare is nowadays largely recognized. There is a growing interest in working in partnership with patients, as key stakeholders in the healthcare sector, in order to jointly evaluate healthcare services and thereby create added value.

The theme of the patient's experience with healthcare is a distinctive trait of the research carried out within the MeS Laboratory which has routinely conducted surveys aimed at patients regarding hospital and emergency care, home care, nursing, community and maternity care as well as primary care and lifestyle. The surveys were carried out through postal surveys, telephone surveys (Computer Assisted Telephone) or via the web (Web Interviewing).
Finally, starting from 2017, the MeS Laboratory has implemented continuous observatories of patients experience (PREMs - Patient Reported Experience Measures) and of patients outcomes (PROMs - Patient Reported Outcome Measures) in Tuscany and in other Italian regions, according to the approach of assessing patients' healthcare pathways through systematic censuses.