The Health Service Ombudsman, Ann Abraham, has today published the first in an annual series of reports examining NHS complaint handling in England, with information on all NHS bodies in the South West region.
Listening and Learning: the Ombudsman’s review of complaint handling by the NHS in England covers the first full year of the new complaint handling system for the NHS, and includes previously unpublished data about the number of complaints received by the Ombudsman in 2009-10 for every South West trust. The report also features patients’ stories from the Ombudsman’s case files. These include the story of Mr C who complained to Plymouth Teaching Primary Care Trust about delays in providing his son with a new wheelchair.

In the report, Ms Abraham warns that the NHS is missing a rich source of free and readily available information about patients by failing to listen and learn from complaints. As the report shows, poor complaint handling can make a difficult situation worse...