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 two revisions this quarter:
- Tables 9, 9a & 9c – after an organisation merger affecting Somerset NHS Foundation Trust (RH5) in April 2020 its organisation type was changed in NHS Digital reference data from a Mental Health trust to an Acute trust after the 2020-21 Q1 and Q2 publication. Therefore, in this publication 2020-21 data for this organisation are presented as Acute trust for all quarters.
- Table 9c – NHS workforce data were revised in January 2021 for all data months back to September 2019. Therefore, the workforce data used in Table 9c for 2020-21 Q1 and Q2 have been revised.
There are also the following two issues to note, which were first 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 are affected by this pause.
In February 2021 NHS England and NHS Improvement announced further measures to relieve ongoing pressures caused by the pandemic. This included allowing providers longer than the usually required 6 months to respond to a complaint and was in place until 30 April 2021.
NHS Digital are unable to estimate the impact each of these issues will have had on overall complaints data. However, it can be seen from the data that the overall volume of complaints fell considerably during 2020-21 when compared against previous years 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. The KO41a collection resumed in October 2020 and data for 2021 Q1 and Q2 were published in January 2021.
KO41a – The 2020-21 Q3 and Q4 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 Q3 would usually have been released in March 2021 and 2020-21 Q4 in June 2021. Likewise, 2021-22 Q1 and Q2 data will be published in one single publication in January 2022.
KO41b – the annual 2019-20 primary care (KO41b) data were not collected or published in 2020 to reduce burden on primary care organisations. NHS Digital then conducted a consultation around future KO41b data collections (see details below).
- Consultation and review of NHS Digital complaints collections
To ensure complaints collections are delivering maximum value for minimum burden on NHS organisations, NHS Digital periodically run consultation exercises to assess the use, data quality, availability of data sources and resources needed to produce the publications. This raises potential for the publications to be revised, reduced in frequency, or discontinued.
We recently completed a consultation on the primary care KO41b collection which has resulted in changes to some of the data items collected and expanded the length of the data collection widow. When we have confirmed plans to consult on the KO41a secondary care collection, we will update this bulletin to inform users and communicate with stakeholders.
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
