HUNDREDS of people complained in writing to a hospital trust about their care, new figures have revealed.

During the first three quarters of 2019-20 the East Suffolk and North Essex Trust, which runs and Colchester Hospital and some out patient clinics at Halstead Hospital, received 958 complaints.

Of these 437 were upheld, 298 partially upheld and 163 were rejected.

The remainder were held over and are yet to be determined.

The total number of new complaints, which can cover more than one issue, made about the trust decreased from the same period in the previous year, when 979 complaints were made.

The most common complaint issue for trusts across England was communication, which was responsible for more than 23,000 complaints nationally – a rise of 27 per cent from 2015-16.

Melissa Dowdeswell, interim chief nurse at the trust, said: “We welcome feedback from our patients, relatives and visitors and have a dedicated, confidential service to help people with complaints, compliments and other comments and queries.

“We encourage people who use our services to let us know what went well and where we can make improvements and we find complaints are very useful to help us to learn and to improve the care we provide.

“To put the number into context, our teams care for approximately 10,000 patients a day, and the majority of feedback we get is very positive.

“Our trust has a patient advice and liaison service, and a complaints team, and their contact details are displayed on posters and leaflets across the trust, and online. People can also raise concerns with the teams caring for them.”

Imelda Redmond, national director of Healthwatch England, said the total number of complaints doesn’t tell them much, as where there is a rise it could suggest a higher number of issues, or simply that people are more empowered to speak up.

She said: “The thing local services and their communities need to understand is what people are complaining more about. Does it relate to a specific service or issue? Has this information been used to improve care?

“It is important that services demonstrate that they are acting on complaints by telling people what they’ve done.”