NHS Redress Wales 2011
The National Assembly for Wales passed new legislation, entitled the National Health Service (Concerns, Complaints and Redress Arrangements) (Wales) Regulations 2011, which became law in April this year.
Essentially the new regulations look at how complaints are investigated and handled by the NHS in Wales and changes the way the complaints are handled along with any subsequent claims for compensation.
The health minister for the principality said at the time: "I want the NHS in Wales to adopt the 'investigate once, investigate well' philosophy, for everyone to play their part in resolving problems and learn from poor experiences of care, or from when mistakes happen."
The regulations will ensure that any patient has the right to make a complaint and be provided with the proper support and that there should be a simplified process of local resolution.
Therefore, from now on patients, relatives and staff, who wish to make complaints about treatment received or incidents involving patient safety, can do so by making them direct to the Health Board. From there, if there is still dissatisfaction, there is no longer an independent review stage, as had previously been the case but cases can now be referred straight to the Public Services Ombudsman for Wales for resolution if appropriate.
The new regulations also aim to standardise the method of investigation into just one single method while local health boards are now allowed to investigate primary care complaints compared to previously when they were just concerned with trying to bring about resolution.
