Complaints need to be central part of providing safe, compassionate care
Thursday, 19 February, 2009
The Healthcare Commission's 'spotlight on complaints' report shows that only a very small fraction of the total treatments the NHS performs led to complaints says Nigel Edwards, policy director at the NHS Confederation which represents over 95% of NHS organisations:
"There were 350 million treatments performed by the NHS last year and out of all this activity just under 9,000 complaints were made, 2,700 of which were upheld by the Healthcare Commission.
"Although it is reassuring that only 0.002 per cent of treatments in the NHS led to complaints, we agree with the Commission that learning from when things go wrong is a vital part of offering high quality, safe, compassionate healthcare. There are several initiatives, mainly from the Darzi review, that will help the NHS listen to what patients say and use this to improve services.
"When things do go wrong it is important that the process of complaining does not compound the original complaint, or create new concerns. The new complaints system provides NHS organisations with an opportunity to address these issues to make sure that complaints are handled better, learning from mistakes is improved and services are improved for patients.
