NO complaints referred to the ombudsman about Dorset County Hospital were upheld over an 18 month period, a new report has revealed.

The Parliamentary and Health Ombudsman Service has today released figures for complaints investigated across all of England’s 156 hospital trusts.

It shows Dorset received 428 complaints.

The Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman received 21 enquiries concerning Dorset County Hospital, three of which they accepted for investigation. None of these, however, were upheld. Some trusts had up to 12 complaints made against them upheld.

Michel Hooper-Immins, an elected public governor for the Dorchester hospital, suggested there would always be people likely to complain.

He said: “We hear from very, very many patients who have had very good experiences at the hospital. Things do sometimes go wrong. I think everything is going well and most people have a happy experience. The idea these days is to learn from complaints. If something’s gone wrong, you can learn from it.”

The report also revealed the top three reasons for hospital complaints were poor communication, errors in diagnosis, and poor treatment.

The Ombudsman Service is the final stage in the complaints process after people have complained to the NHS.

Julie Mellor, Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman, said: “There are lots of reasons why numbers of complaints vary between hospitals and could be due to the size of the organisation or types of patients it serves, for example.

“We are publishing this data today because every complaint presents an opportunity to improve services.

“We know that poor communication, errors with diagnosis and poor care and treatment are the most common reasons why people complain to us about their hospital treatment.

“Other common reasons for complaints are staff attitude, no apology when things go wrong and unnecessary delay in treatment.

“We hope NHS leaders use the data in this report to identify themes, and recurring problems in order to understand what they have done well and how they can improve their complaint handling.”

Procedure ‘integral to improvement’

DIRECTOR of Nursing and Quality at Dorset County Hospital Alison Tong said: “Complaints are an integral part of improving the experience of our patients and help to ensure that safe, high quality care is provided within the hospital. Each complaint is taken very seriously and viewed as a valuable chance to learn and improve the care and service we provide to our patients and their families.

“Our Patient Experience Team support departments to make sure that the learning from complaints is extrapolated, lessons are learnt and improvements made and embedded, to prevent situations recurring.

“Overwhelmingly we receive far more positive feedback from our patients and feel very humbled by the amazing stories and accounts of the care our staff provide.

“That said we are never complacent and we know we don’t always get everything right.

“We are committed to continually learning from complaints and improving people’s experience of being cared for in the services we provide.”