The chair of Healthwatch England says the NHS should welcome complaints from people who witness poor care in hospitals, even if they are not themselves a patient.<\/p>\n
Writing for the BBC publication Scrubbing Up, Anna Bradley says that most hospitals do not file complaints made by witnesses, such as the family and friends of patients.<\/p>\n
Research conducted by Healthwatch England reveals that a third of hospitals in England do not record complaints made by third parties.<\/p>\n
Other hospitals record such complaints as informal feedback but offer no follow-up, while others simply ignore the complaints altogether.<\/p>\n
In one case, a witness who tried to complain on behalf of a patient was told to \u201cmind their own business.\u201d<\/p>\n
The data, which was compiled after a Freedom of Information request was made, suggests that thousands of complaints could be going unrecorded.<\/p>\n
Even if the complaints are logged, they are not normally included in official statistics, meaning a hospital\u2019s data does not reveal the true number of complaints.<\/p>\n
When validating their decision, many hospitals said that third party complaints cannot be investigated without the patient\u2019s permission. Anna Bradley suggests this is incorrect.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is symptomatic of a much bigger problem around complaints handling in the NHS and social care services\u201d she wrote.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe fact that doctors and nurses would rather tell one of these \u201ccitizen whistleblowers\u201d they can\u2019t complain because they don\u2019t tick the right box or have the permission to make a complaint is just wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIf a passer-by reports an abandoned bag in an airport, the staff don\u2019t say: \u201cI\u2019m sorry sir, but do you have permission of the bag owner\u201d. Rather they are thanked for their vigilance.\u201d<\/p>\n
NHS complaints<\/b><\/p>\n
If you have been subject to poor medical care, you should not hesitate to make a complaint. Each NHS organisation has its own complaints procedure. The Patient Advice and Liaison Service (PALs) can help you.<\/p>\n
Alternatively, if you think you have been harmed because of medical negligence, please get in touch with us to discuss making a medical negligence claim.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The chair of Healthwatch England says the NHS should welcome complaints from people who witness poor care in hospitals, even if they are not themselves a patient. Writing for the BBC publication Scrubbing Up, Anna Bradley says that most hospitals do not file complaints made by witnesses, such as the family and friends of patients. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[403,74,402,401,400],"class_list":["post-397","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nhs-complaints","tag-healthwatch-england","tag-nhs-complaints-2","tag-pals","tag-patient-advice-and-liaison-service","tag-third-party-complaints"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.glynns.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.glynns.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.glynns.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.glynns.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.glynns.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=397"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.glynns.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":398,"href":"https:\/\/www.glynns.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397\/revisions\/398"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.glynns.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.glynns.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.glynns.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}