NHS complaints system lets people down, new research warns
Healthwatch England commissioned a poll to find out whether people know how to make complaints about their NHS healthcare and get support to do so, following Lord Ara Darzi's independent investigation into NHS performance last year.
The investigation found serious failings in how the service listens to and responds to patient feedback. It highlighted that “the patient voice is simply not loud enough. There are real problems in responsiveness of services to the people they are intended to serve."
Key findings from the research
The HWE poll, conducted by YouGov, found that out of 2,650 adults living in England who had a poor experience of NHS healthcare, over half, 56%, took no action about their care, and fewer than one in 10, nine per cent, made a formal complaint.
Among those who didn’t formally complain when they had a poor experience, our research identified a number of key barriers to doing so:
- 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%.
The NHS complaints system
Making a complaint is a right enshrined in the NHS Constitution. Introduced in 2009, the constitution pledges to listen and learn from complaints and drive improvements in patient care.
An effective complaints system should be an essential part of improving health services and restoring public satisfaction with the NHS, which is at a record low, 24%, according to data from The King’s Fund.
In recent years, numerous public inquiries and reports have called for changes to the complaints system after providers and regulators failed to act in serious safety cases.
In 2014, Healthwatch England published a report on people’s experiences of health and care complaints systems, following the scandal at Mid-Staffordshire Hospital. Suffering in Silence concluded that people found “making complaints overly complex, incredibly frustrating and largely ineffective”.
Since then, there have been structural changes in complaints handling, with England’s 42 integrated care boards taking on powers to handle primary care complaints where patients don’t go to their service directly.
Most recently, the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman, which handles concerns that haven’t been resolved locally, saw a significant rise in complaints about the NHS. They have called on the Government and the NHS to listen and learn "when things go wrong".
Key recommendations
Findings from the HWE research show that the NHS does not consistently welcome, handle, respond to or learn from complaints in a patient-centred manner. Improvements are needed 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.
