Compliments, concerns and complaints

Investigations

When we investigate your complaint, we will:

• Investigate your concerns in a fair and open way.
• Tell you what happened and let you know about any mistakes that have been made. We will answer any specific questions that you have asked.
• Apologise for any care failings.
• Tell you about any changes we are making to the way we run the hospital.
• Do our best to make the process friendly, simple and sympathetic. Our team understand that any problems in hospital can be very distressing to those affected.

There are some things we can’t do through this procedure:

• We can’t provide any compensation as part of the first stage of the NHS Complaints Procedure.
• Some cases that involve disciplinary action against staff have to be investigated under a different procedure (we will let you know if this affects your case, but limited details will be given due to confidentiality).
• If you are concerned about something that happened a long time ago (usually over 12 months ago), we may not be able to investigate your complaint.

Outcomes

There are many outcomes that can be achieved while pursue a complaint but they mainly fall within these themes:

• Apology & acknowledgment of our error
• Service Improvement
• Staff Training
• Implementation of treatment or action
• Changes to hospital policies or procedures

If you want to make a legal claim for compensation then the complaints procedure will not be able to help with this as these matter are handled by our legal team. If you wish to pursue this action we suggest that you contact Action against Medical Accidents or a solicitor.

Claims for compensation

The NHS Complaints procedure does not make provision for payment of compensation although modest ex-gratia payments (goodwill payments) may be considered in certain circumstances. If you want independent advice on making a claim for clinical negligence, this can be obtained from Action against Medical Accidents (AVMA) . There helpline is available on their website.

Formal complaints should (where possible) be made to us in writing. We would recommend that you use our downloadable complaint form (doc) as it sets out all the information that we need to investigate your complaint. If you are unable to access the form or do not want to use it you can write to us directly by letter or email. You will need to provide details of your complaint, the department involved, yours and the patient’s contact details (if not you) including their date-of-birth. You can use the following details to send your complaint to us:

Patient Experience – Formal Complaint
Bradford Teaching Hospitals
Duckworth Lane
Bradford
BD9 6RJ

Email: patient.experience@bthft.nhs.uk

Please note that if you are raising a complaint on behalf of someone else we may need to obtain their written consent so that we can confirm that they are happy for the complaint to be investigated and to share information with you. We will send a consent form if we do need to obtain their consent.

If you require any support, advice or someone to act on your behalf you can contact the Independent Complaints Advocacy Team (ICAT). ICAT is independent of the NHS and is there to help anyone wishing to pursue a complaint. You can call them on 01274 770118 or you can clinic the following link for more information ICAT Website.

Once we receive your complaint we will acknowledge it within 3 working days. Your complaint will then be passed to a complaints investigator who will contact you to discuss your concerns and set out a timeframe for how long the investigation may take. Once the investigation is complete it will be passed to the Chief Executive’s team to review and approve. Once all this has been completed a response letter will be sent to you will with our findings.

If your complaint involves other agencies, for example other hospitals or Social Services, we will need your agreement to forward a copy of your complaint to them, so we can get their comments. In most cases, we would expect to be able to provide you with a joint response. There may be occasions where this is not appropriate, or you may wish to have a separate response. If this applies we will discuss this with you. If other agencies are involved with your complaint, a form of authority will be attached, which we ask you (or the patient on whose behalf you are writing) to sign and return.

We will try our best to resolve your complaint to your satisfaction but understand that this is not always possible. Therefore, in the first instance you should write back to us advising why you remain unhappy and we will see whether there is anything more we can do to address your complaint, this may include arranging a meeting.

If you remain unhappy once you have completed our complaints procedure and want to take your complaint further you can ask the Parliament and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO) to consider your complaint. The PHSO represent the final stage in the NHS complaints procedure and are independent of the NHS. You can contact the PHSO by calling them on: 0345 015 4033 or visiting their website: ombudsman.org.uk.

The patient’s medical records may need to be accessed by staff who have not been providing direct clinical care. This will only be as part of the complaint investigation; however we can assure you that all members of staff are bound by a duty of confidentiality.

In addition, the information you provide in relation to this complaint including the patient details has been entered into our complaint database. It will be held for a minimum of ten years. Hard copies of all the complaint correspondence may also be kept for ten years. The database and complaint file are held separately to your medical records.  Access to the database and complaint file is strictly controlled and limited to authorised users only.