A report from the Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC) shows a rise in written complaints on previous years, with around 3,100 written complaints a week being made against the NHS in 2011/12 – just over 162,100 for the year.
Although this is an 8% rise on 2010/11 – this comparison is affected by 23 NHS Foundation Trusts submitting data in 2011/12 but not for the previous year. Comparing the 501 NHS organisation (350 NHS Trusts and 151 Primary Care Trusts) who reported data for both years; the rise was said to be just over 1%. The report, Data on Written Complaints in the NHS, 2011-12 presents information reported through collections from NHS hospital and community health services, which was made mandatory for Foundation Trusts (FTs) in 2011/12 and from family health services (GP and dental practices) – by Primary Care Trust (PCT) area; which has been mandatory since 2009/10. The report looked at the total written complaints in each collection, which can be broken down either by service area (who was complained about), or subject area (what was complained about). Total complaints cannot be broken down by both subject and service area at the same time.
