The Health Service Ombudsman has warned that the NHS needs to improve the method in which they deal with complaints, citing evidence that some GP’s are striking badly behaved patients off practice lists without the required warnings.

The ombudsman said the NHS was failing to adequately deal with complaints and many minor disputes were escalating as a result. It is calling for a more accountable NHS, and says it had already attempted to do so by bringing about a more robust complaints system.

Ombudsman Ann Abraham said the report showed that the NHS overall needed to improve the “patchy and slow” way it dealt with complaints. In her latest report on NHS performance, she warns “the NHS is still not dealing adequately with the most straightforward matters”.

Currently, one fifth of the complaints investigated by the watchdog last year concerned removals from GPs’ lists. In many of these cases, Ms Abraham said that GP’s were unaware of their contractual obligations, which require them to grant warnings before patients are removed unless the circumstances are exceptional.

Ms Abraham continued to state that minor disputes over unanswered telephones or mix-ups over appointments can end up being submitted to the Ombudsman due to knee-jerk responses by NHS staff and poor complaint handling. The escalation of these small, everyday incidents represents a hidden cost, adding to the burden on clinical practitioners and taking up time for health service managers, whilst having a negative effect on the patient experience and outcomes.

Of the 15,186 complaints dealt with, 9,547 were referred back to the local health body because they had not completed the complaints procedure properly. Only 349 were then investigated, with 79% (276) upheld with the others either withdrawn, fell outside the remit of the Ombudsman or judged not to be justified.

Jo Webber of the NHS Confederation said that it was “absolutely essential” that the health service improved their processes for dealing with complaints.

Health Minister Simon Burns said the NHS needed to have a “culture of learning and listening” so that mistakes were not repeated. “We have also introduced a more robust complaints system that will help all organisations respond to complaints quickly and effectively” he said.

In order to improve the manner in which medical complaints are handled, managers could seek to implement an Electronic Patient Record (EPR) system which can reduce the time, effort and money spent on preparing data in response to claims. Therapy Manager is such a system which captures all activity against the individual clinician, ensuring a protected, compliant and fully audit-able trail which is easily accessible to managers and administrative staff. Using Therapy Manager, it is estimated that it would take no more than 10 minutes to source all of the required information to deal with a complaint.

Original Source BBC News

About Pathway Software

Pathway Software (www.pathwaysoftware.com) specialises in the design and development of patient information systems for Allied Health professionals.

Its flagship product, Therapy Manager, is an Electronic Patient Record (EPR) system specifically designed for Therapy Services to provide decision makers with the ability to track and manage clinical activity and analyse cost of care by patient, episode or service. The system also demonstrably reduces administration time and the costs of managing Therapy Services.