Ombudsman to investigate more NHS complaints

The Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman is promising to investigate 10 times as many cases this year as it did last year in response to criticism about its complaints handling. The ombudsman is the final port of call for patients in England who are unhappy with a hospital’s original handling of their complaint. In 2012-13, the ombudsman received 16,000 complaints about the NHS. It took a closer look at 3,770 of these and investigated 377, which was a 5% drop on the previous year. Sir Brian Jarman, Emeritus Professor of medicine at Imperial College London, said he was horrified when