Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman Julie Mellor said:
We are the final tier of the complaints system and our job is to give final decisions on complaints about public services. We help 27,000 people every year. Because we are doing more investigations we have upheld a record number of complaints this year, giving more people justice. We have succeeded in doing this whilst maintaining customer satisfaction levels with our service and decisions.
'We are disappointed that the Patients Association, despite several requests, has chosen not to provide us with details of people's concerns about our service.
'We stand by the quality of our decisions. Any poor experience of our service really matters to us. The biggest driver of satisfaction with any Ombudsman Service is whether the complaint is upheld or not. We recognise that sometimes it has taken us too long in coming to a decision and that we need to get better at talking to people. That's why we are modernising so we can provide an even better service to the tens of thousands of people we deal with every year.'