Complaints

You can raise your concerns immediately by speaking with the staff involved.  This might give you the answer you need without having to take it further.

If this is not successful, you can contact our Patient Experience Team by emailing mlcsu.patientexperience@nhs.net.  They will give you confidential advice and support to resolve the problem. If you are considering a complaint, they can explain what is involved, how long it is likely to take and the possible outcomes.  If you decide to go ahead, they will tell you how to do that.

Someone from the independent NHS Complaints Advocacy Service can help you.  An advocate will be able to help to write your complaint and will review any information.  They will help to get your point across to the NHS organisation dealing with your complaint.

You can seek advice from an NHS complaints advocate at any stage of the process.  If you decide you need some support, it’s never too late to ask for help.

Your local council will be able to tell you who the advocacy provider is in your area.

NHS Personalised Healthcare Commissioning (CHC and CC) is the responsibility of your local Integrated Care Board (ICB), but they have asked MLCSU to provide this service on their behalf.  Any complaints about our services will also be signed and agreed by the ICB before they are sent to you, but MLCSU will make sure we investigate and produce their own response to all the points you raise.  This will be signed by a senior member of staff.

You should make your complaint to the Complaint Service where you live.  This could be your local ICB, or it could be provided by MLCSU.  If you are not sure where to send your complaint, you can talk to our Patient Experience Team who will help.

When the complaints team receive your complaint, they will acknowledge it within 3 working days and will tell you when you should expect a reply.  If your complaint is about the service provided by MLCSU they will send your points to us and ask us to investigate.

MLCSU will look into what happened by checking all the written information we hold and speaking to staff members who were involved.  Our investigation will be fair to both you and the staff involved.  If we identify failings, we will explain what changes we will make to stop it happening again.  Our investigation findings will then be used to produce a letter which we will sign and send to the ICB. They will check our response and send it on to you, usually with a covering letter from the ICB.

If you do not agree with the outcome of your assessment and you want it to change, this would be through registering an appeal against the eligibility decision.  The outcome letter that you have been sent provides you with information about how to do this.  Depending on what happened, sometimes you can also complain.  If you are not sure which would be appropriate you should talk to the Patient Experience team or seek independent advice.

Anyone who has received MLCSU NHS Personalised Healthcare Commissioning services can complain to us. You can ask someone to act on your behalf if they have your consent.

A complaint should be made within 12 months from the date the problem occurred or when it came to your attention.

If your complaint involves more than one NHS organisation or the NHS and adult social care (provided by the local authority), you can make your complaint to just one of the organisations involved and they will work with the other organisations and arrange for you to receive a single, coordinated response.

You can complain by email, post or through our website.  When you make your complaint, it would help if you can tell us what you want to achieve so we can address that in our investigation and response.

If you make your complaint verbally, we will ask you to agree a written summary to make sure you agree with how we have captured your complaint.

You can find out more about NHS complaints by looking at the NHS website.

If you still unhappy with how your complaint has been handled, you can ask the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO) to review your complaint.  The PHSO is independent and they may decide to carry a review of how your complaint was dealt with.  They must be satisfied that you we have been given every opportunity to resolve your complaint before they will consider your case.

You can contact the PHSO at:

PHSO

Millbank Tower

Millbank

London SW1P 4QP

Tel: 0345 015 4033

Email: phso.enquiries@ombudsman.org.uk

Web: www.ombudsman.org.uk