Making a complaint

If, despite our best efforts, we are not able to resolve your concerns informally with the staff caring for you or via PALS, you have the choice to make a formal complaint.

To make a complaint please email our complaints office at: ICHC-TR.COMPLAINTS@NHS.NET or send a letter addressed to: 
Complaints department
Fourth floor
Salton House
St Mary’s Hospital
Praed Street
London W2 1NY

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Please bear in mind:

• The chief executive has delegated the handling of complaints to the complaints department. Therefore, contacting the complaints department directly is the quickest way to get your complaint logged and responded to.
• If you are contacting us on behalf of a relative or friend, we may need to obtain their consent to carry out an investigation due to patient confidentiality. You can download and complete this patient consent form and scan it or send it by post to us with your complaint.
• If you would like to complain about the care of a person who is deceased, different rules apply. When you contact us to raise a formal complaint, we’ll explain the rules to you.
• Complaints should be made within a year of the events concerned, or the date when you became aware of the problem. If your complaint dates back further than this and there were good reasons why you weren’t able to complain before, please contact us and we will let you know if we can still help you.
• Any complaint you make about your care or the care a relative has received will in no way negatively affect any care you receive from us in the future. We don’t keep any correspondence about your complaint in your health records. 

Please remember to include the following information in your written complaint:

•  Your, or the patient’s, name and address, email address, contact telephone number, date of birth and, if known, NHS or hospital number.
• A list of any specific questions you would like us to address.
• How you believe we can best resolve your complaint for you.

Next steps

• We will contact you within three working days of receiving your complaint to acknowledge it and agree with you how it can best be resolved. 
• We will do our best to find a resolution to your complaint, which you find acceptable. Sometimes a phone call from the manager in charge of the service area that you are raising a complaint about is enough or you may want an apology. Alternatively, you may prefer a full investigation and a written response. We will do our best to arrange any of these or other possible solutions for you. We will also agree a realistic individual timescale and give you a named point of contact for any additional enquiries that arise during the investigation process.
• We will try to make the complaints process as simple as possible, and if you have a disability or need any other kind of adjustment, please tell us and we will do our best to help you.

If you are unhappy with how we have handled your complaint

If you are unhappy with how your complaint has been handled please let us know. We can agree some other ways of dealing with your concerns. For instance, if you’ve had a response by letter we might be able to set up a meeting to talk about the things you are still unhappy about or we can look into your original complaint in more detail or request that a more senior staff member does so.

We will always try to find ways to resolve your concerns. However, if we have tried all reasonable means of resolving your concerns and you are still dissatisfied you can request an independent review by the Ombudsman. Find out about how to contact the Ombudsman.