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"I now have no access to specialist care"

About: Southmead Hospital

(as a service user),

I had a complaint about my specialist; I tried to resolve this within the department. After a month of nothing happening, I gave up and contacted the complaints service. They said they would investigate, but couldn't do so within the time span they gave, so kept moving the deadline back. 

The intelligence-insulting response I received was not worth the cost of the paper and the postage.

This was not an isolated incident. I have previously been ridiculously messed around with access to appointments (I did get an unreserved apology and an assurance that the department concerned would try to learn from what happened). I have also been emailed detailed and confidential information that related to another patient. When I pointed this out, the response wasn't much more than an "oops" on the part of the staff member at fault.

I have been flagged as being a high suicide risk. I now have no access to specialist care. 

Reading the responses to the negative comments on here, most look to me like a stock response from the complaints team. I feel the complaints team seem incapable of dealing with the volume of complaints they receive. I found it almost impossible to contact them on the phone, and when I left a message, they apparently did not make much of an effort to contact me. (For example, I left a message and after two days they returned the call by ringing my landline. They were told I was out, but then didn't bother calling my mobile, the number I was actually likely to be contacted on - I know the hospital has this number on file. When I tried to call them back, I spent half an hour trying to call in and not get an answerphone and failed).

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Responses

Response from Sue Needs, Deputy Advice and Complaints Team Manager, North Bristol NHS Trust 5 years ago
Sue Needs
Deputy Advice and Complaints Team Manager,
North Bristol NHS Trust
Submitted on 09/10/2018 at 10:54
Published on Care Opinion at 14:31


Thank you for your providing your feedback I am sorry to hear that your experience with the Advice and Complaints Team has not been to the standard that we would expect, and I apologise for the added frustration that this has caused.

As you have indicated in your comments, the Trust has provided you with a response to your complaint, but clearly you are unhappy with the reply you have received. It is our normal practice to make an offer of a meeting in our response letters, however it is not clear from your comments if you have been informed of this option, but I would wish to assure you that meeting is very much available for you. If you would like us to arrange a meeting for you, please contact us on 0117 414 4567 or email us Complaints@nbt.nhs.uk and we will take this forward for you.

Once again, please accept our sincere apologies that you are still so dissatisfied. We will now wait to hear from you.

  • {{helpful}} {{helpful == 1 ? "person thinks" : "people think"}} this response is helpful

Update posted by Despondent and unhappy (a service user)

Thank you for your standard stock response to my review.

I feel that the not-worth-the-cost-of-the-paper response that I received did mention the possibility of a meeting. Given that:

- apparently no-one can understand why I was upset and angry

- Senior Member of Staff "A" was unwilling to admit there was a problem, and

- Senior Member of Staff "B" (who works within your complaints team) called me, and apparently believes that speaking over someone is a suitable substitute for actually listening to them

I really don't see the point. Unless you're suggesting that - if I came in for a face-to-face meeting - someone might behave differently. Given my dealings with your hospital so far, I really don't think the slim likelihood of a meeting yielding any remotely worthwhile results is worth the cost of the petrol and the parking.

Given that this is a review site, I should add a few extra bits of information:

- the response above is probably the most professional communication I have had from the hospital. That this communication is public facing is possibly not a co-incidence.

- I didn't add the tag "rude" to the review. This was added by the Care Opinion staff. I was going to flag it to them and suggest they remove it... but then I remembered the email I received from a member of staff that was so obnoxious that their team leader escalated it, and I received a bordering-on-grovelling phone response from a manager

- I have suffered from crushing depression - more on than off - for three decades. I now have no access to care or medication.

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