Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust welcomes feedback from service users ranging from compliments and comments, to concerns and complaints regarding our hospitals. Please check if the hospital and service is within our Trust.
Please use the following options if you wish to make a compliment, raise a concern or make a formal complaint. If you are unsure, you can contact a member of Patient Experience team who will be able to help you.
Our Patient Experience team are here to listen to any compliments, enquiries and concerns regarding our hospitals. They can help you identify how best to address your concerns and can make sure your enquiry goes to the correct person to address it. They can also advise you on how to make a formal complaint and who you can contact if you need advice or support to do this.
Thank you for taking the time to make a compliment about a service or experience you have had from one of our services or staff.
Compliments are important to us as they tell us what we are getting right. It can be a real boost to staff when they receive a thank you for the care or service that they have provided. Also, in this section, you are able to nominate a member of staff or teams for kindness and end or year awards.
Please use the following contact details to submit your compliment or nomination.
If you have an enquiry or a concern we would suggest that, if you are an inpatient or currently in our hospitals you should ask to speak with the ward/service manager as they are normally able to a resolve a concern quickly.
If the ward/service manager was not able to resolve your concerns or you were not able to speak with them you can contact the Patient Experience team and they will see what they can do to help. They will consider your enquiry and pass it on to the appropriate person/team to look into and to respond. This will normally be by telephone as quickly as possible but sometimes it can be longer depending on the issues being looked into.
You can contact Patient Experience team using the following details :
Please note that if you are raising an enquiry on behalf of someone else we may need to telephone them to obtain their consent that they are happy for the concerns you are raising to be looked into and to share information with you. If we do not have this we will not be able to proceed with the enquiry.
Formal complaints
This section advises how to make a formal complaint about a service, the care provided or an event that happened to you or someone else whilst under the care of our hospitals.
We understand that people only make formal complaints when they feel there are no other options available to them. Therefore, if you are unsure whether you want to submit a formal complaint, please contact our Patient Experience team on 01274 364810 and they will be able to advise and assist you.
Investigations, outcomes and claims for compensation
Investigations
When we investigate your complaint, we will:
Investigate your concerns in a fair and open way.
Tell you what happened and let you know about any mistakes that have been made. We will answer any specific questions that you have asked.
Apologise for any care failings.
Tell you about any changes we are making to the way we run the hospital.
Do our best to make the process friendly, simple and sympathetic. Our team understand that any problems in hospital can be very distressing to those affected.
There are some things we can’t do through this procedure:
We can’t provide any compensation as part of the first stage of the NHS Complaints Procedure.
Some cases that involve disciplinary action against staff have to be investigated under a different procedure (we will let you know if this affects your case, but limited details will be given due to confidentiality).
If you are concerned about something that happened a long time ago (usually over 12 months ago), we may not be able to investigate your complaint.
Outcomes
There are many outcomes that can be achieved while pursue a complaint but they mainly fall within these themes:
Apology & acknowledgment of our error
Service Improvement
Staff Training
Implementation of treatment or action
Changes to hospital policies or procedures
If you want to make a legal claim for compensation then the complaints procedure will not be able to help with this as these matter are handled by our legal team. If you wish to pursue this action we suggest that you contact Action against Medical Accidents or a solicitor.
Claims for compensation
The NHS Complaints procedure does not make provision for payment of compensation although modest ex-gratia payments (goodwill payments) may be considered in certain circumstances. If you want independent advice on making a claim for clinical negligence, this can be obtained from Action against Medical Accidents (AVMA) . There helpline is available on their website.
How to complain
Formal complaints should (where possible) be made to us in writing. We would recommend that you use our downloadable complaint form (doc) as it sets out all the information that we need to investigate your complaint. If you are unable to access the form or do not want to use it you can write to us directly by letter or email. You will need to provide details of your complaint, the department involved, yours and the patient’s contact details (if not you) including their date-of-birth. You can use the following details to send your complaint to us:
Please note that if you are raising a complaint on behalf of someone else we may need to obtain their written consent so that we can confirm that they are happy for the complaint to be investigated and to share information with you. We will send a consent form if we do need to obtain their consent.
Advice and support
If you require any support, advice or someone to act on your behalf you can contact the Independent Complaints Advocacy Team (ICAT). ICAT is independent of the NHS and is there to help anyone wishing to pursue a complaint. You can call them on 01274 770118 or you can clinic the following link for more information ICAT Website.
How we investigate
Once we receive your complaint we will acknowledge it within 3 working days. Your complaint will then be passed to a complaints investigator who will contact you to discuss your concerns and set out a timeframe for how long the investigation may take. Once the investigation is complete it will be passed to the Chief Executive’s team to review and approve. Once all this has been completed a response letter will be sent to you will with our findings.
Involvement of other agencies
If your complaint involves other agencies, for example other hospitals or Social Services, we will need your agreement to forward a copy of your complaint to them, so we can get their comments. In most cases, we would expect to be able to provide you with a joint response. There may be occasions where this is not appropriate, or you may wish to have a separate response. If this applies we will discuss this with you. If other agencies are involved with your complaint, a form of authority will be attached, which we ask you (or the patient on whose behalf you are writing) to sign and return.
Unhappy with our response?
We will try our best to resolve your complaint to your satisfaction but understand that this is not always possible. Therefore, in the first instance you should write back to us advising why you remain unhappy and we will see whether there is anything more we can do to address your complaint, this may include arranging a meeting.
Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman
If you remain unhappy once you have completed our complaints procedure and want to take your complaint further you can ask the Parliament and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO) to consider your complaint. The PHSO represent the final stage in the NHS complaints procedure and are independent of the NHS. You can contact the PHSO by calling them on: 0345 015 4033 or visiting their website: ombudsman.org.uk.
Holding of personal information and medical records
The patient’s medical records may need to be accessed by staff who have not been providing direct clinical care. This will only be as part of the complaint investigation; however we can assure you that all members of staff are bound by a duty of confidentiality.
In addition, the information you provide in relation to this complaint including the patient details has been entered into our complaint database. It will be held for a minimum of ten years. Hard copies of all the complaint correspondence may also be kept for ten years. The database and complaint file are held separately to your medical records. Access to the database and complaint file is strictly controlled and limited to authorised users only.
