News from our partners: Have you complained about your health care or social care?
News from our partners Healthwatch Shropshire
While in the vast majority of cases people are satisfied with the care they or their relatives receive from the NHS or from social care providers, sometimes people don’t get the services they want or expect, and sometimes things go wrong.
When this happens, people often want to register their concerns in an attempt to help prevent the same problems happening to others, get answers to their questions and receive an acknowledgement that things should have been done better. When this happens the route most people take is to lodge a formal complaint.
Healthwatch Shropshire wants to know about people’s experience of doing this; not only if people achieved the outcome they sought through the complaint, but also their experience of making the complaint, did they feel supported, did they have the information they needed, how they were treated and if they felt listened to.
Lynn Cawley, Chief Officer of Healthwatch Shropshire, said:-
“Everybody has a right to complain about their care and treatment when they feel that it has not gone as well as it should have done. Our Independent Health Complaints Advocacy Service can support people through the NHS complaints process. We know from our experience how difficult it can be for patients and relatives to go through the process, as it often involves raising difficult issues, from a distressing time in their lives, which can be emotionally challenging.
“Every health and social care provider, from large hospitals to GPs through to care homes, has a complaints procedure for people to follow. We would like to hear from people who have either lodged a complaint, or have considered lodging a complaint and decided against it, in the last two years.. We can then use these experiences to work with the health and social care sector to highlight where things have gone well and where there may be room for improvement.”
People can share their experiences with Healthwatch Shropshire through an online survey https://www.smartsurvey.co.uk/s/HWSComplaints or by contacting them by phone on 01743 237884.
Healthwatch Shropshire is the independent health and social care champion in Shropshire. It gathers the views and experiences of patients, service users, carers, and the general public about services including hospitals, GPs, mental health services, community health services, pharmacists, opticians, residential care and children’s services. It also has statutory powers that it can use to influence service provision by encouraging improvements.
