{"id":727,"date":"2016-03-26T08:03:08","date_gmt":"2016-03-26T08:03:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.glynns.co.uk\/blog\/?p=727"},"modified":"2016-03-18T15:06:11","modified_gmt":"2016-03-18T15:06:11","slug":"investigations-into-nhs-complaints-not-good-enough","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.glynns.co.uk\/blog\/investigations-into-nhs-complaints-not-good-enough\/","title":{"rendered":"Investigations into NHS Complaints \u201cNot Good Enough\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">The Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman has said the process of investigating NHS complaints is \u201cnot consistent, reliable or good enough\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">When a complaint is made against an NHS Trust, the Trust should conduct an investigation and provide the \u2018complainant\u2019 with a formal response, explaining what has happened and why. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">But the Health Ombudsman has recently uncovered shortcomings in the quality of these investigations, with many failing to admit that mistakes have even been made. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><b><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">Findings of the review<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">The Ombudsman reviewed 150 complaint investigations where serious or avoidable harm was alleged. It found that:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>In 40% of cases, the investigation did not even find out what happened<\/li>\n<li>In 73% of cases, the Trust found there had been no failings, but a later review by the Ombudsman found there had been failings<\/li>\n<li>70% of serious cases are not being identified as \u2018serious\u2019<\/li>\n<li>In 41% of cases, an inadequate explanation was given to the patient\/their family regarding what went wrong and why<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">The Ombudsman also raised concerns about the abilities of staff to investigate and learn from mistakes, concluding that:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>There is no consistent or standard approach to investigations<\/li>\n<li>Staff are not adequately trained to carry out investigations nor given dedicated time to do so<\/li>\n<li>There are missed opportunities to learn from mistakes<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">In summary, the Ombudsman said the review raised \u201cdoubts about the ability of NHS Trusts to reliably identify when something has gone seriously wrong and why.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">\u201cWithout this capability, Trusts will continue to miss opportunities to learn and make service improvements.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">Was your complaint inadequately investigated?<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">If you feel your NHS complaint was inadequately investigated, you might want to consider pursuing legal action in the form of a medical negligence claim. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">To speak to a solicitor about the possibility of a compensation claim, please get in touch with us at Glynns Solicitors. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman has said the process of investigating NHS complaints is \u201cnot consistent, reliable or good enough\u201d. When a complaint is made against an NHS Trust, the Trust should conduct an investigation and provide the \u2018complainant\u2019 with a formal response, explaining what has happened and why. But the Health Ombudsman has [&hellip;]<\/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":[791,789,790,74,299],"class_list":["post-727","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nhs-complaints","tag-complaint-against-nhs","tag-health-ombudsm","tag-nhs-complaint-not-investigated","tag-nhs-complaints-2","tag-suing-the-nhs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.glynns.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/727","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=727"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.glynns.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/727\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":728,"href":"https:\/\/www.glynns.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/727\/revisions\/728"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.glynns.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.glynns.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.glynns.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}