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Feedback and complaints

Your views matter

The information below will help explain how you can:

Your views are very important to us. They can help us improve our service to all of our patients.

Our aim is to always listen, respond and learn from feedback
It is always our goal to provide high quality care and get it right for all patients all of the time. Therefore, your views, both positive and negative, about the quality of the service you received, are important to us.

Ways you can feedback
There are a number of ways you can provide direct feedback about our services. These include:

How to provide a compliment or say ‘thank you’
We are happy to receive letters from patients, families and carers about the care provided. These can be addressed to the Divisional Director of Private Health. Alternately you can complete a Patient Feedback Survey or email esht.sphgovernance@nhs.net

How to raise a concern
While most people are happy with the care they receive, this is not always the case. It is often possible to resolve concerns or complaints when they arise, by talking to the staff immediately involved. Our staff will do their best to sort out the problem as quickly as possible. Information about you is kept confidential and complaining will not influence or affect any further care and treatment. If it is not possible to resolve the matter in this way, they may ask you whether they can involve a more senior member of staff.

Raising a complaint
If you are unhappy with the facilities or service, we want to know about it as soon a possible. We will investigate the situation so that we can explain, apologise, and take positive action where necessary.

We take all comments and complaints seriously and we always:

Local resolution
If you tell us as soon as the problem arises, it can often be sorted out without delay. In many instances, the member of staff in charge of your daily care should be able to help with day to day queries. Otherwise, the Divisional Director of Private Health, or a member of staff will be happy to assist.

Write to or email us
If you prefer, you can put your comments in writing. You should write a letter to the Divisional Director of Private Health of the hospital where you were treated, stating:

What can I expect from raising a complaint
We acknowledge all complaints received within three working days and after reviewing your complaint (in conjunction with your medical records if necessary), we will undertake a full investigation. If you have given us your telephone number or email address, we will also try to contact you to discuss your complaint.

We will then ask appropriate members of staff to provide a response to the complaint issues you have raised, and we may ask for a review of clinical care to be undertaken where appropriate. We will also endeavour to provide you with an update on the progress of your complaint and if we experience any delays in completing the complaint investigation, we will contact you to advise you of this.

Once the investigation has been finished, the complaints team will prepare a written response. The Chief Executive will read your complaint, the investigation records and then the written response that has been prepared and if the response is satisfactory, it will be signed and sent to you. If the Chief Executive has questions about the investigation or the response, it will be returned to the Complaints Team to address these and ensure that the final response meets our quality standards.

What can I do if I am not happy with your response?

If you are not happy with our response to your complaint, please contact us as soon as possible to let us know.

We can, in discussion with you, re-open your complaint and look again at any issues you feel we have not dealt with to your satisfaction or that require further clarification. We can also arrange for you to speak with relevant managers or clinical staff (subject to any restrictions), as this may provide further explanations or clarifications you need to help with your questions.

It is important that we make evert effort to resolve your complaint locally and, as far as is possible, to your satisfaction. However, there may be occasions when we are unable to achieve this and in these cases you can follow the instructions below:

If you are a private patient, you have the right to take your complaint to independent adjudication. This process is run by the Independent Sector Complaints Adjudication Service (ISCAS) who only become involved once you have been through the hospitals complaints policy. You can email ISCAS on info@iscas.org.uk or telephone 020 7536 6091.

You may also wish to share your experience with the Care Quality Commission (CQC). Although they cannot look into complaints about health care or social care services, they would still like to hear from you if you are not happy about the care you receive. This is because they can use this information when they are looking at individual services in England to make sure that they are meeting important standards of quality and safety.  To contact the Care Quality Commission you can email: enquiries@cqc.org.uk or telephone: 03000 616161.

If you are an NHS patient at Sussex Premier Health, you can write to the Health Service Ombudsman with details of your complaint to:

Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman
Millbank Tower
Millbank
London
SW1P 4QP

Email: phso.enquiries@ombudsman.org.uk
Telephone: 0345 015 4033
Website: www.ombudsman.org.uk