Hospitals sluggish on handling complaints, ombudsman finds

Many hospitals are still failing to handle complaints from patients and their families in a timely, sympathetic and constructive way, the ombudsman has found.

Hospitals sluggish on handling complaints, ombudsman finds

Many hospitals are still failing to handle complaints from patients and their families in a timely, sympathetic and constructive way, the ombudsman has found.

Delays in responding to complaints, confusion over who should handle them and failure to demonstrate that anything was learnt from them remain too commonplace, said Peter Tyndall.

Mr Tyndall is today publishing a report on the progress made following his office’s 2015 investigation into the way public hospitals handle complaints.

That report contained 36 recommendations, all of which were accepted by the HSE and Department of Health but only 10 of which have been fully implemented. Mr Tyndall found 17 were partially implemented while the remaining nine had not begun.

While the report acknowledges hospitals and areas where good practices are observed and notable improvements have been made, Mr Tyndall said he was disappointed with the overall level of progress.

He said: “We have carried out an extensive investigation into hospital complaints systems and we found that they fall short of what we would expect from effective systems.

“People can die when lessons are not learned from complaints.”

Following the 2015 report, the HSE was to develop an online complaints management system to enable all hospitals to log, track and monitor trends in complaints as well as report on their outcomes and provides statistics and case studies for shared learning among.

However, Mr Tyndall found it was not in all hospitals, it was not clear whether it could carry out all the required functions, complaints officers had not been trained on it, and hospitals were not producing regular reports where it was in use.

This was unfortunate, he said. “A proper functioning complaints management system would not only allow for the HSE and hospitals to monitor trends and particular areas of concern. Instead, at this point, there is a continuing danger that issues will be overlooked and/or ignored,” he said.

The report shows the number of complaints’ officers has almost halved since 2015, and many of them have multiple responsibilities such as handling freedom of information requests and parliamentary questions from the Dáil, instead of being dedicated to complaints.

Many hospital websites lack basic information on how to make complaints or hide such information in hard-to-find sections, and people often have to make multiple complaints before their issue is addressed.

The HSE’s open disclosure policy, meanwhile, remains voluntary and training is not widespread.

Mr Tyndall said his 2015 report showed many service users were nervous about making complaints for fear of repercussions for themselves or their loved ones.

He said it was essential all the recommendations he had made at the time were followed through to change this situation.

“Complaints are absolutely integral to improving the quality, safety and accountability of our health services. Listening to service user feedback and learning from what goes wrong is essential if we are to deliver a safe and effective health service,” he said.

“Service users need to feel confident to speak up when things go wrong and to know that their concerns are being taken seriously.”

“Likewise, health service staff need to be able to make service users aware of how to complain, provide reassurance that there is nothing to fear from doing so and make sure that complaints are properly addressed.”

He said that there were plans to create a National Patient Safety Advocacy Service but he called on the HSE and Department of Health to continue working to ensure all his recommendations were acted upon.

more courts articles

Man (25) in court charged with murdering his father and attempted murder of mother Man (25) in court charged with murdering his father and attempted murder of mother
Man appears in court charged with false imprisonment of woman in van Man appears in court charged with false imprisonment of woman in van
Man in court over alleged false imprisonment of woman Man in court over alleged false imprisonment of woman

More in this section

Irish homelessness Government criticised for missing social and affordable housing targets
National Risk Assessment for Ireland Tánaiste urges Israel ‘to show humanity’ and allow more aid into Gaza
Lego set based on RNLI lifeboat could soon become a reality Lego set based on RNLI lifeboat could soon become a reality
War_map
Cookie Policy Privacy Policy Brand Safety FAQ Help Contact Us Terms and Conditions

© Examiner Echo Group Limited