NHS complaints system lets people down, new research warns
Read the latest report from Healthwatch England – A pain to complain: Why it’s time to fix the NHS complaints process
Healthwatch England's recently published research found a number of barriers that prevented people from making a complaint about their healthcare.
Barriers included:
- Around a third of respondents, 34%, didn’t believe the NHS would use their complaint to improve services;
- A third, 33%, thought NHS organisations wouldn’t respond effectively to their complaint;
- Thirty percent didn’t believe the NHS would think their complaint was serious enough;
- One in five, 20%, were scared that complaining would affect their ongoing treatment;
- Nineteen percent said they didn’t know who to contact to make a complaint.
- Overall, over half of people who made a complaint to an NHS organisation were dissatisfied with both the process of making a complaint, 56%, and the outcome of their complaint, 56%.
Key recommendations
Our findings show that the NHS does not consistently welcome, handle, respond to or learn from complaints in a patient-centred manner. We need action to:
- Make the complaints process easier for patients and their families to navigate.
- Monitor and improve the performance of organisations that handle complaints
- Develop a culture of listening to and learning from complaints.
