The Welsh Ambulance Services NHS Trust strives to ensure that our patients receive the best possible service and care at all times, but occasionally mistakes and misunderstandings do occur. If you have a concern or complaint about a recent experience with the Trust, we would very much like to hear from you. It is important for us as a service to understand incidents when mistakes or misunderstandings occur. This allows us to try to put them right for you. Furthermore, this allows us the opportunity to continually review and improve our services to meet the needs of our patients and their families.
We will investigate your concerns under the National Health Service (Concerns, Complaints and Redress Arrangements) (Wales) Regulations 2011 and provide an explanation to the concerns you raise.
If you have a complaint regarding a recent experience of using Trust services, we can receive and register your concern in a number of ways best suited to you.
Email the team: Amb_PuttingThingsRight@wales.nhs.uk
Call the team direct: 0300 321 321 1
Please do not call this number if you need medical advice. For urgent healthcare advice call 111 or call 999 in a serious medical emergency.
This phone line is only monitored between 9am and 5pm, Monday to Friday. A member of our team will contact you within five working days.
Complete the online form: Online Concerns Submission Form
If you have been involved in a road traffic incident or had damage to property with a Trust vehicle, please click on this link Damage to Property.
What we will need from you
When raising your concern, we will ask a series of questions to enable us to gather the correct information required in order to investigate your concern accurately. The information we will require in the first instance is:
You should try and raise your complaint as soon as possible following an incident, however we understand that this may not always be possible. You can raise your complaint up to 12 months after the date of the incident.
Assistance with your Complaint
If you prefer a friend, family member or carer can provide assistance, representing you and raising the concern on your behalf, we will however require your permission to agree to this and will require your written consent.
Llais Cymru works to enhance and improve the quality of your local health service. They are your statutory and independent voice in health services provided throughout Wales. Llais Cymru can provide you with free confidential help and advice if you have a problem or concern with NHS services. You can find the contact details of your local Llais on the website www.llaiswales.org.
Each health board authority or Trust in Wales has its own concerns team, details of which can be found here.
After raising your concern, it will be registered by the Putting Things Right concerns administration team, and within five working days we will acknowledge your concern. We may contact you if we need any further information about your concern, to identify how much you wish to be involved, or with any information we have found.
We aim to provide a final response within 30 working days of the concern being raised, however, if we cannot reply to you within that time we will make contact to update you, and let you know why.
In some cases, further investigations may be needed and may require your consent to access medical records held by a health board or your GP surgery and is taken forward under the Redress arrangements. We will contact you to update of these developments and to request any further information or access to records as required.
We will contact you with our formal response at the conclusion of the investigation, either in postal letter, email or other preferred method of contact identified by yourself. If you are unhappy with the investigation, or response to your concern, it may be possible to resolve this by meeting with the Trust and discuss your concerns. This often proves a very positive and effective way of reaching a satisfactory outcome for everyone involved.
If you remain unhappy about the response to your concerns, you can contact the Public Services Ombudsman for Wales. The Public Service Ombudsman is independent to the NHS and offers a free, confidential service. Their details are:
The Public Service Ombudsman for Wales
Tel: 0845 6010987
www.ombudsman-wales.org.uk/
Email: ask@ombudsman-wales.org.uk
Address: 1 Ffordd yr Hen Gae, Pencoed, Cardiff, CF35 5LJ
Useful Links & Contacts
Llais Cymru
Tel: 0845 6447814
Tel: 029 20 235558
Website: www.llaiswales.org
Email: enquiries@llaiscymru.org
Citizen’s Advice Bureau
Tel: 0844 477 2020
www.adviceguide.org.uk/wales
FAIR PROCESSING NOTICE
The Welsh Ambulance Services NHS Trust works in partnership with the National Patient Safety Agency (NPSA) by reporting patient safety incidents to the NPSA through the national Reporting and Learning System (RLS). Information is passed to the NPSA to enable it to learn from patient safety incidents and perform its functions relating to the ongoing management of health care services in England and Wales. The RLS operates on an anonymous basis; however, information which constitutes patients’, staff or visitors’ personal data may in some cases be passed to the NPSA. Where this is recognised, it will be deleted, as it is not the intention of the NPSA to hold person identifiable information.