Complaints

Complaints

The Patient Experience Team provides a point of contact for patients, their families and carers. The Team aims to: • Listen to comments, concerns and complaints • Answer queries and help resolve problems on behalf of patients, their families and carers • Provide advice and support on how to make sure concerns and complaints are dealt with in a satisfactory manner • Liaise with departments to ensure concerns and complaints are dealt with and effectively responded to

The Patient Experience Team is available Monday to Friday, 9am to 4pm and can be contacted by telephone on 01709 424461 or email us at your. experience@nhs.net

There are two important things to remember:

It is important that you make your formal complaint as soon as possible after the event you want to complain about has happened. The National Health Service has laid down time limits for accepting complaints. In order to assemble all the facts, the earlier a complaint is made the better. The time limit for making a formal complaint is 12 months from the event, unless you could not have been aware at the time that there was cause for complaint. In such cases, the complaint must be made within 12 months of you becoming aware that you had cause to complain.

If you are writing on behalf of a patient, the patient must be aware that a complaint is being made and the substance of the complaint. Their signed authority must always be provided. If for any reason this is not possible, an explanation should be given and in some cases the patient’s next of kin can give authority for the complaint to be investigated.