This report
The Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman provides an independent and impartial complaint handling service for complaints that have not been resolved by the NHS in England and UK government departments.
We investigate complaints where someone believes there has been injustice or hardship because an organisation has not acted properly or has given a poor service and not put things right. We share findings from our casework to help Parliament scrutinise public service providers and to help drive improvements in public services and complaint handling.
This report presents information on complaints we received, assessed and investigated about the NHS in England from April to June 2019 (Quarter 1 2019-20). In our strategy for 2018-21 we committed to publishing the outcomes of our casework, including where we found against the organisations we investigate and the actions they take to comply with our recommendations.
We are publishing our recommendations data for the first time alongside this report and will update the data each quarter to indicate where compliance has been closed for each investigation.
In advance of publishing all of our casework online, we are also working to ensure greater consistency in how we describe the recommendations we make to organisations following investigations. This will give complainants and organisations we investigate greater confidence in what we do and how our decisions have made an impact.
As well as recommendations data, we have published a full data table of complaints received, assessed and investigated about NHS organisations during Quarter 1 2019-20. This is a major step in our objective to increase the transparency and impact of our casework.
Download our report on Complaints about the NHS in England: Quarter 1 2019-20 [PDF 2.22 MB]