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Walsall Manor Hospital trust receives 3,000 complaints in a year

The trust which runs Walsall's Manor Hospital received more than 3,000 complaints last year and bosses have admitted they are not responding to patients concerns properly.

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Walsall Healthcare NHS Trust received 3,416 complaints last year, up from 3,300 the previous year.

These include six letters from MPs, 370 formal complaints and 2,418 'informal concerns'.

The list also included complaints from patients who were not happy with their operation and complaints over delayed appointments.

Over the last year, it was the trusts division of medicine and long term conditions which generated the most complaints, followed by the general surgery team and women's services.

Mr Amir Khan, Medical Director at Walsall Healthcare NHS Trust said the trust will look to improve standards in the future based on the complaints it receives.

He said: "We as a Trust try our best to provide high quality care to our patients. When and where we fall short of our aspired standards we encourage our patients to bring them to our attention. Complaints are one way where we can learn to improve our standards."

The trust, which sets itself a target of responding to 70 per cent of complaints within 30 working days, only managed to respond to 51 per cent within that time frime.

A statement from a board report reads: "Despite a number of interventions including increased monitoring and exception reporting through to Divisional teams and the Trust Executive, the situation has not improved.

"It is recognised that a number of factors have affected response times including an increase in the number of complaints received and variances in complexity.

"In addition the poor quality of responses received often leads to complaints being returned to the division for further work which causes a further delay to the overall time frame.

"A new approach is being considered which will review the time frame for responding and focus on quality."

The increase in complaints comes at a difficult time for the trust, who are looking to make fast improvements after being put into special measures by health bosses earlier this year.

The CQC put the Trust into special measures at the start of this year after identifying a number of failings, including in maternity services and emergency care.

Inspectors noted the trust's consistent failure to hit A&E waiting time targets as a major issue as the number of patients treated within the four hour national target fell below expectations for 'almost all of the period between April 2015 and May 2015'.

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