Stafford Hospital bosses in new blow

Hospital bosses have admitted they are facing a backlog of more than 200 complaints from patients and relatives at Stafford Hospital.

Trust bosses have said the complaints process at the hospital is not fit for purpose and many cases are not being dealt with fast enough.

The latest figures show the trust had a backlog of 216 complaints in August.

Some complaints are now months old with relatives and patients left without answers or apologies.

Bosses at the hospital have laid the blame at staff in the hospital departments and wards who are failing to investigate, answer questions and approve responses quick enough.

The quality of the responses from the departments has also been criticised and a report by Julie Hendry, interim director of quality and patient experience described the current system as "disjointed, ineffective and substandard with complaints not given the priority they deserve."

She also highlighted the fact there was no process to flag individual members of staff named in numerous complaints and no scheme to escalate concerns to senior managers.

Now the hospital will impose new targets on staff to bring the backlog under control.

By the end of September no complaint will be more than 10 weeks old and by December 1 no complaint will not meet the 28 day national standard for responses to be issued.

The complaints team will also have a new manager, with increased training and a move to a caseworker system where staff handle a complaint through the entire process.

Julie Hendry said: "The current situation with complaints is unacceptable. We are failing patients once with their care or service and then failing them again with their complaint with an inadequate response time, not answering their questions or a lack of a serious apology."

She said many complaints had been outstanding for months with the hospital departments failing to respond quickly enough.

She added: "Six months to respond to a complaint is just way too long."

In the first six months of 2010 Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust received 318 complaints, an average of around 53 a month.

A number of recent complaints worryingly involved care delivered in the past few months rather than historical incidents.

The top areas of complaints include medical care, staff attitude, missed diagnosis and delayed treatment.