Patients complaining about poor care in the UK's National Health Service are made to feel like time wasters by the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman which is not fit for purpose, according to a report from The Patients Association.
The Patient's Association , said it had received hundreds of calls in six months, from people who felt they had been abandoned by the service.
The report says the ombudsman is supposed to act as a final port of call for people who feel their complaints have not be dealt with adequately by hospitals, surgeries or care providers. But patients said ombudsman staff were 'rude', 'dismissive' and 'insensitive', and complained that investigators often ignored evidence and were clearly biased in favour of the NHS.
The Patients Association said that people complaining to the PHSO found themselves battling needless bureaucracy and having to wait up to two years for a resolution, while others said the standard of investigations was ‘shockingly poor’ and ‘naive’ and warned reports were ‘misleading’ and littered with inaccuracies. Even where recommendations for improvement were made, it was found that the PHSO rarely checked to see if NHS trusts were complying, the report found.
The Patients Association said many calls to its helpline were from people concerned that the PHSO ‘wanted to protect the NHS at all costs.’ The charity said that the PHSO needed to recognise that patients or the family of loved ones contacted the services as a last resort and were often traumatised or grieving.
The PHSO is to merge with the Local Government Ombudsman later this year, and sources said it would help to cut through some of the bureaucracy.
A PHSO spokesperson is quoted in the report as saying: “We receive more than 100,000 enquiries and investigate 4,000 cases a year. Our processes are fair and robust and we constantly seek feedback from complainants to improve our service. We recognise there can be times when people find it hard to agree with our findings.”
[link url="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2017/01/16/nhs-watchdog-staff-rude-dismissive-insensitive-says-damning/"]The Daily Telegraph report[/link]
[link url="https://www.patients-association.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/PHSO-Follow-up-report-FINAL-2016.pdf"]The Patient's Association report[/link]