Toolkit on good complaints handling

The Healthcare Commission has produced a new guidance document: Complaints Toolkit – handling complaints within the NHS. This has been developed to offer advice and assistance to NHS bodies and primary care providers on best practice in handling complaints at a local level and will also help trusts to ensure they have the right procedures in place meet Core Standard 14.

It offers tools and templates to guide those who deal with complaints in conducting a robust investigation with the aim of resolving concerns locally.
The toolkit is built upon the Healthcare Commission’s experience of independently reviewing complaints since 2004 and upon that of others working at local level.

By encouraging a consistent approach to managing complaints, the toolkit provides assistance for local health organisations to develop more robust local procedures that offer a more effective resolution for those who raise complaints. The toolkit further aims to foster a culture of learning from complaints within the NHS in order to drive service improvement.

We urge all NHS bodies and primary care provders to make use of the toolkit in order to improve local resolution for complainants and to better establish a culture of learning from complaints within the NHS

Comments, feedback and enquiries are welcomed. Please forward any comments to:
complaints@healthcarecommission.org.uk

NHS bodies are also reminded that annual reports on NHS complaints should be sent to the Healthcare Commission at the same time as they are sent to strategic health authorities.

Healthcare Commission Complaints Team
5th Floor
Peter House
Manchester, M1 5AX

Complaints Toolkit (pdf 1299kb) (opens new window)

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