We welcome and value your feedback on your experience of our care as it helps us identify good practice and areas where we need to improve.
Calls to our PALS team may be recorded for training or monitoring purposes.
If you've had a good experience, think a member of our staff has gone the extra mile or have a suggestion on how we can improve our services, let us know in one of the following ways:
- Talk to your local service staff
- Send your local service staff a letter or email
- Contact our Patient Advisory Liaison Service (PALS) on 0118 904 3467 or PALS@berkshire.nhs.uk
We’re committed to providing excellent care and if you or a loved one have had a bad experience with one of our services, we want to know. This gives us a chance to put things right, learn from the experience and make sure it doesn’t happen again.
Making a complaint is quick and easy and can be done in the following ways.
If you’re happy to, talk to your local service staff so they can try and fix the problem. If you want some support to do this, contact our PALS team, who will be happy to help.
Phone: 0118 904 3467
Email: PALS@berkshire.nhs.uk
If you’ve already talked to your local service staff and are still unhappy with the outcome, you can make a formal complaint in writing to our Complaints Office or our Chief Executive, Julian Emms.
Phone: 0118 904 3420 (if you leave us a message, we’ll get back to you within two working days)
Email: complaints@berkshire.nhs.uk
Independent Health Complaints Advocacy can support you through the NHS complaints process. The provider in Bracknell Forest, RBWM, Reading, Wiltshire, Wokingham and West Berkshire are The Advocacy People.
For more information, including self-help resources if you would like to raise the complaint yourself:
Website: www.theadvocacypeople.org.uk
Tel: 0330 440 9000
Email: info@theadvocacypeople.org.uk
Once we’ve received your complaint, we’ll follow the standard NHS regulations and assign you a senior manager who will deal with your case seriously and as quickly as possible.
We’ll get in touch with you to make sure we have as much information as possible. We’ll also talk to all the staff involved to find out what happened and, if you agree, we’ll contact any other agencies who may have been involved.
Once we’ve finished investigating, our Chief Executive, Julian Emms, will send you a formal response by post.
Unfortunately, we’re unable to investigate complaints if you’re taking legal action against us or seeking financial compensation. We might also not be able to investigate your complaint if it’s about something that happened more than 12 months ago.
Read the full Berkshire Healthcare complaint policy.
If you’re not happy with our formal response, or if you have any questions, please let us know.
We’ll look into the way we’ve investigated your complaint or arrange a meeting with you to discuss what we found in detail.
If you’re still unhappy, you can ask for an independent review from the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman within 12 months of the date of our formal response.
Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman
Millbank Tower
Millbank
London SW1P 4QP
www.ombudsman.org.uk
Phone: 0345 015 4033
You can contact our Complains Office between 9.30am and 4.30pm, Monday to Friday (excluding bank holidays) in the following ways.
Phone: 0118 904 3420 (if you leave us a message, we’ll get back to you within two working days)
Email: complaints@berkshire.nhs.uk
If you would like to make a formal complaint, please put your concerns in writing to:
Julian Emms
Chief Executive
Berkshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust
London House
London Road
Bracknell
RG12 2UT