This quarterly collection is a count of written complaints made by or on behalf of patients. These data are for complaints about NHS Hospital and Community Health Services (HCHS) in England and are collected via the KO41a form.
The NHS complaints procedure is a statutorily based mechanism for dealing with complaints about NHS care and treatment. All NHS organisations in England are required to operate the procedure according to the complaints arrangements introduced in April 2009. Although the 2009 regulations apply to complaints about both adult social care and the NHS, these data only cover NHS complaints.
This is the latest publication of the quarterly NHS written complaints collection. Prior to 2015-16 complaints data were published annually (1997-98 to 2014-15). There is also an annual data collection for Primary Care (GP & Dental) complaints which is collected on the KO41b form, although this was not conducted in 2019-20 (see further detail below).
Revisions and Issues
There are no revisions this quarter. There are the following two issues to note, which were communicated to users in an update to the publication series page in September 2020:
- Impact of Covid-19
In March 2020 NHS England and NHS Improvement announced an optional pause to the NHS complaints process due to Covid-19 to allow health care providers to prioritise their response to the pandemic. Patients and the public were still able to make a complaint, and these would be acknowledged and recorded by providers. This optional pause lasted until June 2020. Therefore, it is likely that the complaints data recorded for 2020-21 Q1 and Q2 are affected by this pause, as well as the impact that Covid-19 has had on overall healthcare provider activity. NHS Digital are unable to estimate the relative impact each of these issues will have had on overall complaints data.
In March 2020 NHS Digital also suspended the complaints collections and publications to reduce the burden on NHS organisations during the initial phase of the pandemic. This suspension applied to the secondary care (KO41a) and primary care (KO41b) collections.
KO41a – The 2020-21 Q1 and Q2 data are both included in this single publication. They would normally have been collected and published separately but have been combined to minimise the burden on providers. 2020-21 Q1 would usually have been released in September 2020 and 2020-21 Q2 in January 2021. Likewise, 2020-21 Q3 and Q4 data will be published in one single publication in July 2021.
KO41b – the annual 2019-20 primary care (KO41b) collection should have taken place during May/June 2020 with publication in September 2020. However, following the suspension of the collection, and to reduce burden on primary care organisations, these annual data have not been collected and published for 2019-20. NHS Digital intend to conduct a consultation around future KO41b data collections (see details below).
- Consultation and review of NHS Digital complaints collections
To ensure that the complaints collections are delivering the maximum amount of value for the minimum burden on NHS organisations, NHS Digital aim to consult on both of the complaints collections and publications during 2021.
These will assess the use, data quality, availability of data sources and resources needed to produce the publications. There is potential for the publications to be revised, reduced in frequency, or discontinued.
Initially we will consult on the primary care (KO41b) collection where we intend to conduct the consultation during January/February 2021.
Further Information
NHS Digital welcomes comments on this publication to inform future reports. Please contact us with comments and suggestions stating ‘Data on Written Complaints’ as the subject via:
Email: [email protected] Tel: 0300 303 5678
Previous editions of the publication can be found on the NHS Digital website
