Complaints

We want all our patients to have the best possible experience when they come into our hospital. We know that in a busy hospital, sometimes things can go wrong. When this happens we want to encourage you to speak up. By sharing your concerns you can also help us make sure that others don’t have the same poor experience. We know that it can feel difficult to raise a concern, but we want to know when you have concerns. Please speak to a senior member of staff in the area where the problem happened.

We want to hear what patients, families and carers have to say so that we can understand what matters most. We will use your feedback to improve our services.

Our Patient Advice and Liaison Service (PALS) team will listen to your concerns and questions. They will help you with any problems you have about your visit to the hospital. PALS can also try to answer any questions you have about the hospital and can provide information about other organisations or groups that may be helpful. The team will help to resolve situations as quickly as possible. You can contact the PALS team on 023 9228 6309 or PHT.PALS@porthosp.nhs.uk

 If PALS haven’t been able to sort things out, then you can make a formal complaint. Complaints help us to learn from your experiences and improving our services. The Complaints Team can give you help, advice and support in making a complaint. They can help you find an advocate who can support your through the complaints process. If you would like to make a complaint, you should do this as soon as possible. Usually, we will investigate complaints that are:

• made within 12 months of the event, or

• made within 12 months of you realising you were unhappy about a specific situation or event

When we get your complaint, we will contact you within three working days to discuss it. We will agree a way forward on how you would like your concerns dealt with. If we are unable to contact you by telephone, we will acknowledge receipt of your letter in writing. Can I complain on behalf of someone else? You can send us a complaint on behalf of someone else. If you do this, we will ask their permission to share confidential and personal information with you. We will undertake an investigation into all the concerns which you have raised. We will send you a written response within an agreed timescale. We encourage complainants to attend a meeting to help to resolve concerns at an early stage.

Investigation: Each complaint is investigated by senior staff in the care group where the problem happened. All complaint responses are agreed by the Trust’s executive team. We aim to respond within three months. Investigations can sometimes take longer than expected, but we will do our best to respond as soon as we can

Response: If the investigation is taking longer, we will let you know as soon as possible. We take all complaints and concerns very seriously. We have an open and honest approach to responding. When we find evidence of a failure or mistake we will tell you. We will provide you with an explanation of how this happened. We will also tell you what we are going to do to try to prevent it from happening again.