Last updated at 11:29, Friday, 02 November 2012

BOSSES at the trust responsible for running Furness General Hospital have called for a change in the way patients’ issues are raised and handled.

PROGRESS NEEDED: Jackie Daniel, chief executive of the University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Foundation Trust, pictured with Sir David Henshaw, interim chairman of the trust. Ms Daniel wants complaints to be tackled differently.

The number of formal complaints, concerns and Patient Advice and Liaison Service cases dealt with by the University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Foundation Trust has gone up year-on-year, in line with national trends, with an increase of 49.5 per cent projected for the 2012/13 year compared to 2008/09.

Trust interim chairman, Sir David Henshaw, and chief executive, Jackie Daniel, felt the incumbent system of dealing with these issues is too “bureaucratic,” a UHMBT board meeting heard yesterday.

Chief nurse Jackie Holt shared a report showing an increase in the number of complaints dealt with within UHMBT’s 35-day target, and said both the speed and quality of responses was improving.

While both the chief executive and chairman welcomed that, both felt a bigger change was needed.

Ms Daniel said: “It still feels, from where I’m sitting, that we’re reacting after the event and we’re losing the opportunity to really engage and change people’s perceptions.

“It’s still feeling like a faceless, bureaucratic response.”

Mrs Holt said a system was needed where concerns were picked up “at zthe point of care”, to prevent patients having to make formal complaints.

She described how staff were being instructed to regularly ask patients and their families whether there were any problems, and rectify them there and then. Sir David said there was clear progress, but added: “We’ve got to think, ‘what would the patient want?’, right from the start, as soon as they arrive on the ward. We need a set system.”

The chairman also said the trust needed to be more prompt in contacting those who make complaints.

He asked Mrs Holt to provide an idea of how the board could look at meeting these goals at next month’s meeting.

Sir David said: “We’re bound to get complaints, that’s the nature of our business, but often the thing that stays in the customer’s memory is how we resolve things.

“The key thing is to make sure the people we serve walk away thinking, ‘that’s an organisation that knows what it’s doing’.

“This is a really powerful statement we need to make, this is what we’re about.”

First published at 16:18, Thursday, 01 November 2012
Published by http://www.nwemail.co.uk