Health service targeted by rising patient complaints

Hospitals and health services are facing a growing tide of written complaints from dissatisfied patients and relatives, according to Doctors.net.uk.

Almost 500 people a day write or email a complaint about services. In the 12 months ending in March, the number of complaints increased by 4.6%, according to the Health and Social Care Information Centre.

This was equivalent to an extra 96 complaints a week. The biggest increase hit ambulances crews – which faced a 28.5% surge in complaints from 2012 to 2013 – a total of 5,700 in the last year.

Some 34,400 complaints were lodged against inpatient hospitals services – but this was a reduction of 1.3%. Meanwhile, 52,100 complaints were lodged against doctors and 24,800 were lodged against nurses.

This was reflected in the kind of complaints made. Some 52,300 were about clinical care while 13,300 were about the attitude of staff and 11,500 about the quality of information.

In general practice, doctors narrowly incurred more complaints than their administrators. Some 24,400 grievances were lodged over medical care while 22,600 were lodged about general practice administration.

Centre chair Kingsley Manning said: “Our latest figures show that the NHS is receiving a large number of written complaints each day.

“Today’s report also shows a rise over the last year in the number of written complaints made against NHS hospitals and community services.”