INFORMATION SHEET
This Trust's Policy and Procedure for the management of Complaints, Concerns, Comments and Compliments is set out in accordance with the Local Authority Social Services and National Health Service Complaints (England) Regulations 2009.
Helpful information when making a complaint
What we will do
We take your concerns or complaints about our services very seriously and want to make sure that we deal with them in an efficient and open way. We aim to deal personally with each one and you will have a named complaint facilitator who will contact you regularly over the period of time it takes to investigate your concerns. Details of your complaint facilitator are set out in the enclosed letter. We will work as flexibly as we can and will try to ensure that each complaint is handled in a personal and confidential way, in order to reflect your wishes.
If your complaint involves an outside agency, for example, another NHS Trust, local authority Social Services, the GP service or ambulance service, we will need your agreement to refer your concerns on to them. In most cases we will try to provide a joint response, but there may be instances when this is not the best way to address your concerns, in either case, we will tell you what is going to happen.
What we would like you to think about
Once we have received your complaint, we will want to know how you would prefer to be contacted, such as by telephone, email or letter, etc.
So that we can start investigating your concerns and respond appropriately to you, we will need to talk to you to confirm the issues you would like us to address. We will also want to understand, as clearly as possible, what you are expecting as an outcome to your complaint. It would be helpful if you could consider this prior to us telephoning you.
We will contact you by telephone (or in an alternate way if you have requested this in your initial contact with the Trust) as soon as possible. If it is more convenient or you prefer to contact us yourself by letter, telephone or email, please do so.
We can respond to your complaint in a letter or arrange to meet with you to discuss your concerns. The meeting would usually be with senior clinical staff, such as a ward manager or Matron, and/or senior staff responsible for the management of the services you have raised concerns about. A member of the complaints team would also be present.
There may be some issues that we can resolve quickly, but others may take a little more time to address as we may have to do a more detailed investigation before we can provide you with our response or arrange to meet with you. A member of the complaints team will discuss and agree with you reasonable timescales for this to happen. If you decide that you would like a meeting to be arranged and there are times that you are not available, this may mean that it will take longer for the meeting to take place. A detailed investigation may take up to 65 working days (13 weeks) to complete. This timescale may vary dependent upon the complexity of your complaint, this can range between 25 – 65 working days.
Please note that if you are undergoing ongoing clinical care while your complaint is being investigated, precedence will be given to your medical records being available for your treatment over the investigation of your complaint.
Confidentiality and Consent
If you are making a complaint on behalf of another person, they must give their consent, in writing, to us, if they are able to do so, so that their confidentiality is safeguarded.
Independent advice
If you feel it would help you to have the assistance of someone outside of the Trust with your complaint, the Independent Complaints Advocacy Service (ICA) is available free of charge. For confidential advice ICA can be contacted on telephone number 0300 456 8349.
The next steps
We will make every effort to resolve your complaint. If, however, you feel dissatisfied with the response provided you can contact the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman. Their contact details are:
The Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman
Millbank Tower
Millbank
LONDON
SW1P 4QP
Telephone: 0345 015 4033
Website: www.ombudsman.org.uk