COMPLAINTS about Worcestershire Royal Hospital have almost doubled in the last five years.

The number of complaints received has gone up from 277 between April 2008 and March 2009 to 407 between April 2012 and March 2013 – a rise of 47 per cent.

Grievances about the Alexandra Hospital in Redditch, have risen by 44 per cent over the same period, although the number of complaints peaked at 272 in 2011-12 and fell to 243 last year.

In total Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust received 706 complaints in 2012-13, the same figure as the year before, with the majority of them – 59 per cent – about clinical treatment.

The next most common gripes were about the attitude of staff (9.3 per cent), cancellation or delay of appointments (6.4 per cent) and arrangements for admissions, discharge or transfer (6.4 per cent).

Trust bosses want to tackle not only the number of complaints but the way they are dealt with – a particular concern being that only 66 per cent of complaints received a response within their own agreed timescales last year.

As part of their efforts to improve they have enlisted the services of an external complaints expert, Nicola Sawyer, who has spent much of the last two years dealing with the fallout of the care failings scandal at Mid Staffordshire Hospital. She has now completed a complete review of the complaints system and presented board members with a comprehensive list of 23 recommendations aimed at improving performance. However overall she feels the trust is on a “pretty good rung of the ladder” when it comes to complaints. “I am usually only called in when things have gone absolutely pear-shaped but the pleasure here is that we have a reactive trust that has invited me in,” she said.

“Things are not that bad but it wants to improve.” Chief nursing officer Helen Blanchard said that, handled correctly, complaints could be a “powerful form of knowledge” and a useful early warning.

“We do have a high level (of complaints) compared with some trusts but we encourage people to make their concerns known.”

Chairman Harry Turner said complaints could be valuable to trigger change and drive improvements, but the trust should be making every effort to eliminate them.

“I struggle with the notion that we don’t want to reduce complaints,” he said.

“Almost 10 per cent of our complaints are to do with staff attitude and who does not want to reduce that?

“We don’t want to stop customer feedback but we do want to stop things getting so bad people feel the need to complain.”