A quarter of people in the UK experienced poor NHS care last year, but fewer than one in 10 complained about it, a patient watchdog report reveals. It became.
Healthwatch England found that when people made complaints, more than half were dissatisfied with either the process or the outcome. Complaints can take months to resolve.
The report said there was a widespread lack of public trust in the health service's handling of complaints and that there was “no evidence that the health service was meeting its obligation to use complaints to improve the service.” Almost no.''
Louise Ansari, the watchdog's chief executive, accused the NHS of doing nothing to take complaints more seriously and urged the NHS to “listen and learn” so that patients' concerns start to be given more weight. He called for the adoption of “culture”.
The report said the NHS appears to be stuck in a “cycle of repeating the same mistakes”, failing to adequately address repeated concerns about how it deals with complaints and inquiries from public sector bodies.
Mr Ansari said: “We raised the alarm over failings in the NHS more than a decade ago following the patient safety scandal at Mid Staffordshire Hospital. Ten years on, our research still shows that We know that people still have no confidence in the NHS complaints system.”
The health service has not heeded calls for a review, showing continued “serious shortcomings in the way NHS organizations listen to and respond to patient feedback”, the watchdog said. .
In October, YouGov surveyed a representative sample of 2,042 UK adults about their experiences of NHS care for Healthwatch, and found that a second group of 2,650 adults had had a bad experience with NHS care in the past 12 months. surveyed people. They discovered:
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At the time, 24% of patients received inadequate treatment, equivalent to 10.7 million people in the UK.
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56% took no action and only 9% filed a complaint.
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20% feared that their treatment would be affected if they complained.
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34% did not trust the NHS to use their complaints to improve services.
of UK NHS Constitution We make it clear that patients have the right to complain and require services to learn from patients.
Complaints against the NHS hit a record high of 241,922 in 2023-24, a 5.4% increase on the previous year's 229,458 and a 38% increase on the 174,872 in 2013-14.
The report, entitled 'It hurts to complain', states: Low public trust means people are unable to take action when they receive inadequate care, and the current number of complaints may be just the tip of the iceberg.
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“There is little evidence that complaints are being used systematically to improve care. The NHS consistently fails to welcome, process, respond to and learn from complaints in a patient-centred manner. .”
This increase may suggest that patients are becoming increasingly confident in speaking out, but is also due to a decline in the quality of care caused by pressures on the NHS, particularly since the pandemic. There is a possibility that it is.”
The NHS Integrated Care Board (ICB) takes between 18 and 114 working days to respond to a complaint, with an average of 54 working days. HealthWatch said the Department of Health and Human Services should eliminate this variation by setting mandatory response times, adding that the ICB should also measure patient satisfaction with complaint handling and its outcomes. Ta.
NHS England said staff were working tirelessly to meet the growing demand for care. Primary care services such as GP surgeries and hospitals treated record numbers of patients in 2024.
A spokesperson said: “The NHS takes patient experience very seriously and is committed to listening to patients and rolling out initiatives like Martha's Rule, which in some cases are already having a transformative effect. I am working hard to.''
The findings come as public satisfaction with the NHS is at an all-time low in the 40 years since records began. Only 24% of people in the UK are satisfied with the way it works.
