More than 3,000 hospital complaints in year

The trust which runs the borough's Manor Hospital, received 3,109 complaints over the last 12 months, a decrease from 3,416 the previous year.

These included six MP letters and 284 formal complaints with the majority of the total coming in the form of informal concern's, which amounted for 2,091 of the total complaints.

Gary Perry, head of patient relations with the trust, said: "During 2016/2017, the over-riding theme emerging from formal complaints was ‘clinical care, assessment and treatment.

"This accounted for 59 per cent of all complaint categories with communication, appointments, diagnosis and discharge accounting for the majority of the rest."

Mr Perry also added that the trust was looking to improve the way it handles complaints over the coming year.

He said: "The Trust recognises that our patients and service users have a range of experiences when using our services and that we should provide them with a mechanism to feed back to us both positive and negative experiences.

"Where possible, we should take immediate action to put things right and where this is not possible it is important that we have a robust complaints process in place that endeavours to be responsive, that strives to meet user expectations whilst learning from and improving the patient journey.

"A one size does not always fit all and the Patient Relations proactive approach to resolution demonstrates a willingness to put the patient at the heart of the process.

"Great strides have been made in the last year to embed a revised approach to complaint handling and improve timeliness which is evident from the improvements made.

"It is however clear that there needs to be further work done in evidencing lessons learned and ensuring these are shared and monitored for effect.

"The complaints monitoring panel provides a useful quality check to the process and its feedback is both appreciated and valuable.

"In the coming year we will seek to develop new ways of promoting the lessons learned and through appreciative improvement demonstrate the successes made."

The Walsall Healthcare NHS Trust which runs the hospital was placed into special measures in January 2016 after inspectors declared it was 'inadequate' overall.

Chief executive Richard Kirby says the trust is expecting its next inspection 'in the near future' and has recently urged staff to showcase improvements made in the last 18 months when the moment arrives.