BackPeople who complain to the NHS are often denied the answers they so desperately need, leaving them no choice but to bring their complaints to the Ombudsman’s service.
The Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman’s report published today (31) contains 100 cases it has resolved. They include complaints about avoidable deaths, GP out-of-hours care, delayed cancer diagnosis, poor hospital discharge and incorrect medicine dosage being given to patients.
In all 100 cases, people complained to the organisation locally first. But there was a failure to resolve the complaints locally, meaning that they had to seek the help of the Ombudsman service to get the answers they so desperately needed.
The report contains a snapshot of unresolved complaints brought to the Ombudsman service for investigation, over October, November and December last year, of which 41% were upheld.
During the three month period, the Ombudsman service completed investigating 889 complaints, 730 about the NHS in England and 159 about UK government departments and other organisations, such as the Jobcentre Plus, UK Visas and Immigration (UKVI) and the Border Force.
Most of the summaries published today are about upheld or partly upheld complaints. These provide clear and valuable lessons for public services by showing what needs to change to avoid the same mistakes happening again.
During the three month period the report covers, the Ombudsman service upheld 43% of complaints it received about the NHS in England and 31% of parliamentary cases. Combined this is an uphold rate of 41% for this period.
Source: Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman - UK
