An acute trust has asked Verita to clear a large backlog of complaints and review its complaint handling system at one of its hospitals after it was criticised by the Care Quality Commission.
Onsite complaints
Chris Brougham who is leading the five-strong onsite team explains: "Our first priority was to tackle the backlog of complaints and ensure new complaints were dealt with on time. We then reviewed all complaints dealt with since June 2011 to identify recurring issues, inform the clinical areas involved, and make sure action is taken to prevent a recurrence.
"We are now working with the inhouse team to review the current complaint handling system and design a better, more robust system for the future."
Verita has also helped the trust tackle its backlog of serious incidents. Chris Brougham has reviewed the last 500 surgical and 500 medical incidents and graded them according to the risk of harm and likelihood of recurrence. She is now working with matrons to help them take back responsibility for reviewing and grading incidents.
Since undertaking the work on complaints and serious incidents, the trust has asked Verita to conduct a review of other aspects of the hospital's governance structure, for example the need to improve systems for learning lessons from incidents and complaints. We have also been asked to review arrangements for handling complaints in other hospitals run by the trust.
For more information, please contact Chris Brougham on 020 7494 5670 or email at chrisbrougham@verita.net.