May be informative:
Complaints about the NHS in England: (ombudsman.org.uk) https://www.ombudsman.org.uk/sites/default/files/2018-08/Complaints_abou...
Parliamentary and Health service Ombudsman January to March 2018 to 2019.
What did people complain about?
Hospitals and community health services were the most complained about
health organisations.
This is not surprising considering the majority of patients will be using these NHS services for more serious and possibly long-term injuries or illnesses. The most complained about issue within these services was access to treatment or drugs, which includes failure to diagnose and delay in diagnosis.
I encourage you to read the report and share with colleagues who may be interested in the results.
The data in Chart 3 shows the top six complaint issues for cases we investigated in Quarter 1 in a hospital and community setting.
These issues were:
• Access to treatment or drugs - other: 101 cases. We record eight complaint issues within this category including issues around diagnosis, referral and visits. This ‘other’ category is used to record any issues that fall outside these more specific categories.
• Access to treatment or drugs - failure to diagnose: 35 cases. These were complaints about a misdiagnosis or a failure to diagnose a condition that the complainant believed was not acceptable.
• Communication: 28 cases. Communication issues could include how clinical decisions have been explained and whether the implications were made sufficiently clear.
• Clinical treatment - surgical: 25 cases. This refers to complaints arising from surgical treatment and is one of nine clinical treatment groups we record as a complaint part. We record issues around consent separately.
• Other health: 23 cases. These complaints could relate to other issues such as funding the transfer of care.
• Access to treatment or drugs - delay in diagnosis: 23 cases. These are complaints where there has been an unreasonable delay in diagnosing an illness or starting treatment
HIFA profile: Richard Fitton is a retired family doctor - GP. Professional interests: Health literacy, patient partnership of trust and implementation of healthcare with professionals, family and public involvement in the prevention of modern lifestyle diseases, patients using access to professional records to overcome confidentiality barriers to care, patients as part of the policing of the use of their patient data.
Email address: richardpeterfitton7 AT gmail.com
