NHS complaint referrals double
The number of people asking for their complaints about the NHS to be independently reviewed has doubled in the past year, new figures show.
About 8,000 complaints were referred to the Healthcare Commission in the year to August after local health services were unable to resolve them – compared to just 3,700 in 2003-04.
Of these, one in three cases are sent back to the NHS because the health watchdog finds the local health trust has not dealt with the issue properly.
The commission is now warning local NHS trusts that they must take responsibility for improving grievance procedures to speed up the process.
“The number of NHS complaints referred for independent review has gone up dramatically,” said the commission’s head of operation development, Marcia Fry.
“We have been working as hard as we can to get as many NHS complaints resolved as quickly as possible and those efforts are now bearing fruit. However, all trusts must also play their part.
“Patients want complaints resolved quickly and locally so NHS trusts need to be good at this. It is worrying that so many of the NHS complaints that come to us – over one in three – are having to go back to the NHS to be put right.”
Today’s figures measure the first year in which the Healthcare Commission took over the second stage of the NHS complaints procedure – previously referrals were dealt with in-house.
A spokeswoman for the Department of Health noted that the sharp rise in the number of people requesting an independent review of their complaint showed the “increased level of confidence” in the new procedures.
“It is to everyone’s benefit – NHS staff and patients – for complaints to be resolved quickly and effectively at a local level – this remains the focus of the NHS complaints procedure,” she said.
“But there needs to be an effective, independent stage where local resolution is not possible. We therefore welcome the initiatives identified by the Healthcare Commission to help improve complaints handling at a local level.”
The commission is currently dealing with 4,500 complaints, while 1,600 unresolved patient grievances have been with them for more than six months. A quarter of the unresolved cases require further information from the NHS to reach a satisfactory conclusion, it says.
More than half of complaints were about acute hospital trusts and foundation trusts while more than a third were about primary care trusts and practitioners such as GPs and dentists.
