NHS Ombudsman reports rise in complaints

Thursday, 26 June 2003 12:00 AM

The Health Service Ombudsman, Ann Abraham, has announced a sharp rise in the number of complaints about the NHS in the last year.

To the end of the last financial year she received almost four thousand complaints, a significant number more than the 2,660 received the year before.

While this appears to indicate a significant rise in the level of dissatisfaction, the rise has been attributed to the funding of continuing care for elderly and disabled people.

Ms Abraham reflected on plans to change the complaints system in her report, and noted that existing procedure allowed disparities on how complaints are handled in different areas. She further noted that changes would have to ensure that complaints are learned from so as to improve the NHS.

She commented: 'At present I see examples of both good and bad complaint handling; the picture across the country is patchy.'
The report stated that only 30% of complaints could be considered for investigation as the rest had either not arrived through the NHS complaints procedure, or had fallen under other jurisdictions. However, of those investigated, three quarters were upheld.

Several common themes of complaints are listed in the report, which include the disinclination of junior staff to refer patients to senior clinicians, and the lack of effective communication between professionals, patients and families. It is also suggested that many complaints were made more severe by poor complaints handling at a service level.

The ombudsman has also published reports of 77 investigations for the last four months, which include cases of elderly people being inconsistently assessed for the funding of care.

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