Complaints: United Lincolnshire Hospitals Trust made it into the top list for the number of complaints about service received to ombudsmen.
United Lincolnshire Hospitals NHS Trust has been listed in a report as one of the most complained about services in the country.
The report, by Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsmen, placed ULHT ninth out of hundreds of authorities, trusts, dentists and GP surgeries for the number of complaints it received in the 2011/12 financial year.
When a resident wishes to complain about the service within the NHS, they can submit their complaint to the relevant Trust, where the case can either be solved with or without investigation, or can be sent to a health ombudsmen.
The report states there was an 8% increase in complaints going to the ombudsmen service over the 2010/11 period.
ULHT received 97 complaints to the ombudsmen service over the year, while the service with the highest number of complaint received 145.
However, out of these complaints received, two needed to be resolved through intervention and just one was accepted for investigation by ombudsmen.
A spokesperson for ULHT said: “ULHT is committed to resolving complaints at a local level and considerable progress has been made in improving complaint management over the last year. We are dedicated to improving our services and learning from complaints and other feedback from our patients and the public.
“As one of the largest acute Trusts in England, ULHT is likely to have more contacts with the ombudsman than smaller organisations.
“Of the complaints taken to the ombudsman about ULHT in the financial year 2011/12, the majority were not taken forward for investigation and were referred back to the Trust for local resolution when the case was reviewed.
“There are in fact 102 Trusts in the country with more cases taken forward to investigation by the ombudsman than ULHT.
“In addition, the Trust had previously been incorrectly prompting people to go to the ombudsman at any time from acknowledgement of complaints and throughout the process. This has now stopped and we now only signpost those where we cannot achieve local resolution.”
Whatsapp
