Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman Recensioni 

Have to agree with many here don’t bother. You spend a year going through the process give accurate information and details and they side with the clinical teams. I’m not sure why we have them as an advocacy for patients.

I complained to the ombudsman , my complaint failed as they said to much time had past even though I complained within twelve months of realising my doctor lied to me ( he still works for the NHS ) I believe the ombudsman is NOT independent , it exists to protect the NHS

Reading the completely negative reviews reflects also my experience. It seems completely incomprehensible that an organisation such as this gets so many negative reviews and nothing appears to happen to hold them to account. The review and poem by Lucy is so indicative of the problems and is clearly written by an intelligent and talented person. Over the years we have had cause to use the PHSO twice, firstly sometime ago in connection with a Continuing Care matter in relation to my wife’s late Mother, that was a complete waste of effort and they clearly sided with the NHS who did everything possible to avoid paying for continuing care.
My most recent experience was in connection with a complaint about our GP Service or lack of it.
Even though substantial documentary evidence was produced and audio files of a telephone consultation with a GP, disclosed following our GDPR request, the PHSO dodged around the clear evidence, dancing on the head of pin to find no fault, in fact they were really not interested it seemed unless you had died, claiming due to lack of resources they have to target what they would regard as more serious matters.
I even wrote direct a personal letter of complaint about their so called investigator to Rebecca Hilsenrath their CEO, what happened, the letter was passed back to the very person I was complaining about for them to respond !! Completely outrageous. Sadly experience with the PHSO and some of these other so called Ombudsman has been exactly the same, none of them are fit for purpose!

O faithless hands, who justice falsely claim,
The PHSO hath brought itself to shame.
With careless hearts and tongues that twist the truth,
They mocked my pain and scorned both age and youth.

Their codes they broke with bold and open face,
No grievance heard, no proof they did embrace.
Unfit-picked guides were sent no word from me—
Just records flawed, bereft of clarity.

Those poor advisors, ill-equipped and bare,
Were left to guess what wrongs had brought me there.
The facts, though firm, were turned upon their head,
And lies were dressed as truths, their bonds to shed.

Their findings false, their process naught but jest,
A travesty that gave my soul no rest.
Their bias plain, their justice but a show—
A shadow court where truth may never go.

And when I cried, “this judgment is untrue,”
Their guard of truth denied what they must do.
They claimed, untrue, they fix but facts alone,
And left my deeper wounds to bleed, unknown.

So crushed was I, so burnt, so cast aside,
I could not seek the courts, though law applied.
And thus fiends walk away, untouched by blame,
As did the cause of Post Office shame.

Let no man say this beast hath served us well—
It fosters rot where virtue once did dwell.
A hollow court, where truth is cast aside,
Where justice begs, and knaves in shadows hide.

It shields the wrong, and strikes the just man's plea,
While draped in robes of false integrity.
Our Country's Health falls like stone,
When none are held to task but left alone.

The public scorned, their voices mocked and marred,
Their wounds made sport, their sufferings unbarred.
And all this waste, this cruel, corrupt parade,
Is paid by coin the honest poor have made.

Then let it fall—this blight, this foul pretense!
Tear down the gate that guards incompetence.
No more shall such a knave consume our trust:
Strike out its name, and grind its form to dust.

I would have put zero star if I could! My case demonstrates just how pointless this organisation is funded by HM Treasury (us taxpayers!). I had a late diagnosis of ovarian cancer by my GP who for a year put my symptoms down to the menopause. When I was diagnosed I was at stage 4b with 2-3 months to live without any treatment. I complained to my GP and of course they came back stating they had followed all processes and after reviewing themselves they had done nothing wrong. I decided I didn't want to go down a malpractice route and all I wanted was for my complaint, the GP's response to be put onto my NHS App. My GP Surgery refused this and said complaints were put on a different system and not possible to upload to my NHS App. I went to the PHSO and they advised they were closing my complaint as the 'outcome sought is not achievable' and as an independent service, separate of the NHS they do not have the remit, legally or otherwise, to instruct the Surgery to add communications to my NHS App. My question is 'WHAT POWERS DO THEY HAVE'?! My request must be the simplest thing possible so if they can't do this what can they do?

The Ombudsman investigating failed to reply to 3 emails over a 6 month period, agreed the GP was at fault but failed to enforce the recommended compensation, claiming he could "only ask if they were willing to compensate." Nver heard such rubbish in my life!

If you want to know how the PHSO plays the game, just look at the score line.

The truth is Ombudsmen are completely valueless to man or beast. They are an ‘age-old’ government-concocted scam/dis-service, purely for display and made to disable any complaint you can barely throw at them.

I have a number of full-on experiences and discovered this is how they achieve their ‘goal’.

You send in all of your factual and irrefutable evidence collated over years, they then ignore every single scrap of it (by not even opening your PDF), and base their entire conclusion on the lying teeth of the health service/institution that has just made ‘clinical negligence and abuse’ fashionable. *simples*

Yes, I am trying to be extremely ironic, but horrendously, every single word I say, is true.

This was a quite an horrendous experience from start to finish. Unbelievable.
The process took more than a year, and added so much extra stress and anxiety at every turn. Every single email received throughout from the caseworker was negative and caused so much alarm and distress to the family every time.
I am not surprised the reviews are so negative on here. 1 star throughout.
It seems everyone has exactly the same dreadful experience.
I wish I had seen them before ever contacting this shambolic institution.
PHSO are disgusting, and actually printed complete lies and defamatory comments in their report.
They ignored evidence we sent and twisted and misinterpreted other evidence.
Instead of being understanding and someone to help with a complaint against the NHS (District Nurses) the PHSO were the exact opposite.
The District Nurses had lied on medical records and these cannot be challenged and are accepted by the PHSO as absolute fact, even when there were witnesses and evidence provided by us.
It is one thing the Caseworker not upholding your complaint, but they go on to actually point the finger at the family and blame them instead!! .... Astonishingly awful.
The PHSO is just not worth the bother. You will get nowhere. My Caseworker was a disgrace, unhelpful throughout and her emails, which you waited forever for, often didn't make sense. She was only interested in defending the NHS at all costs, and completely ignored evidence we provided. Then when complaining to her manager, he was no better.
Complete waste of time.
The overall experience ? ...
Disgusting. Disgraceful. Stressful. Distressing. Appalling. Upsetting. Horrific. Scandalous. Preposterous.

I sent PHSO a very detailed complaint with documents, timeline and even video evidence regarding the neglect of my uncle who had dementia and cognitive issues and was on end of life care, or lack of it, the health authority concerned caused severe malnutrition to my uncle, he starved for nearly two weeks because they failed to inform the community nurses and care providers that he could not self feed, I live 60 miles away and when I visited my uncle I realised within 10 minutes that there was a problem and I then had to battle with the authorities to get extra time so the carers could feed him, in fact if I hadn’t had visited him when I did he would have died from malnutrition because when I mentioned it to the district nurses they just said that this was to be expected of end of life patients, shocking, yes the care providers were also at fault but the blame lies with the NHS trust, I am registered blind and was suffering from complicated grief so was unable to bring my case within the 12 months stipulated, I was 4 months over that time but instead of telling me this straight away they said that the trusts complaints procedure needed to be completed before they could investigate so they sent me back to the trust, this process took another 18 months to finally complete only for PHSO to state that I was out of time, I wrote a further 2 emails explaining the reason for the delay but they absolutely refused to listen, they can waive the time limit in certain circumstances but they didn’t deem my reason as sufficient, this strict time limit of 1 year is really unfair especially when it can take PHSO 5 years and above to complete a case, I do know this as fact. I wrote to my local MP in regarding to my case who tried his best, he wrote to ask them to reconsider and he has just forwarded their response, they even told him not to contact them again, this organisation is not fit for purpose and a waste of taxpayers money.

If we had visited this site first and seen the terrible reviews, we would never have taken our complaint to the PHSO.

Have you ever thought ‘why did I bother’? Well, that was how we felt after taking our complaint to these people. A whole year wasted. We couldn't have been more disappointed with this service.

After an extremely traumatic experience with our local hospital (which led to the death of our mother) and taking our complaint as far as we could with the Trust, we got nowhere. The Trust advised if we wanted to take the complaint further to contact the PHSO. This we did. We had the initial assessment and the PHSO went forward with the investigation. It was all positive to start with and it seemed they were serious about supporting us with our complaint. How wrong we were. We provided as much information as we could including our concerns, notes of dates, times, actions, and records etc. We received email updates here and there (months in between) and were a bit perturbed that for each email, we were pressured to reply in just a few days even though they had taken months between each update. We needed to share the responses with family, absorb the information and then respond appropriately. We assumed that due to the length of time the investigation was taking, our complaint was being taken seriously.

After almost a year we received a ‘provisional’ response. The report was so one sided, in favour of the hospital Trust, that we could hardly believe what we were reading. We were asked to respond with any questions or comments. We did this, commenting how upset we were with the outcome, but we received short shrift from the case worker and a rather unpleasant attitude, verging on passive aggressive to be honest. We were told that even though the report was provisional, it was final and that no changes would be made.

To our dismay, the investigation had focused entirely on notes made by the hospital. It was as if everything we had said had been disregarded and because we had no photographic evidence to prove our concerns, even though every member of the family witnessed what we had reported, it was as if those concerns just didn’t exist!

My advice to anyone who has a relative in hospital – take photo evidence of everything and I mean everything. Take notes of staff names, dates and details. Take notes of every conversation with every doctor or nurse and note the dates and the times you have those conversations. If you can, record them too! Take picture evidence of your relative. Every bruise, every rash, every concern, literally everything that you know in your heart is not right because if you need to complain, you’ll need them. Without them, you will not be believed. We learnt that hard lesson and will have to live with that for the rest of our lives.

These people are not on your side.

Useless service - absolute waste of space

I submitted a complaint about the treatment I received at an NHS urgent care center, which resulted in disfigurement to my face due to the actions of an emergency practitioner nurse. Thankfully, I was able to afford private surgery to correct the damage.

The nurse failed to consult a specialist and attempted to stitch a deep wound near my lacrimal gland—something that clearly requires the expertise of a surgeon or ophthalmologist, not a general nurse. When I brought this to the Ombudsman, I was told their medical adviser was a nurse with 25 years of experience. Frankly, this is unacceptable. No matter how experienced, a nurse is not qualified to make specialist surgical assessments. It felt like a clear attempt to cover up NHS failings.

I appealed the decision and specifically requested a review by an appropriate medical specialist. Again, the case was reviewed based on the advice of a nurse, and my appeal was rejected.

To make matters worse, my caseworker handled the process poorly. Her communication and oversight were unprofessional and contributed to what was already a distressing experience.

This entire process has been deeply disappointing. It shows how difficult it is to get accountability within the system, especially when poor decisions are protected rather than properly investigated.

All of the employee that I have dealt with at PHSO have been unprofessional, incompetent and lazy. I have been required to supply supporting evidence for everything that I have said. The surgery have failed to supply evidence and frequently lied. I have even exposed the lies but staff have simply ignored that. The PHSO intaker handlers and investigators have failed to show any impartiality and appear to have always accepted what the surgery says. The investigators have misled me into believing that I would be supplied with evidence from the surgery which was untrue. I agreed to the surgery carrying out a complaints procedure self audit believing that I would see the audit. When I requested the review I was denied. I have for many years worked in an audit unit. I was also given the impression that evidence would be gathered from the surgery that I would be able to review. That never happened! I challenged the medical reviewers finding but was told that I could not make a formal complaint to the GMC because PHSO does not disclose the doctor’s identity. I complained to managers but they were as useless as the front line staff. One tried to convince me that an episode of Atrial Fibrillation 28 years ago qualified as a pre-existing heart condition and that insurance companies would require disclosure.
During my working life I was a registered nurse, prison Governor, trained investigator and auditor. Having managed health care in prisons for many years I find it disgraceful that the public are forced to rely on an organisation that simply dismisses complaints because they only want to investigate serious incidents. I personally believe that the complaints that I made could have resulted in serious harm or even death.

Wowsers, does this organisation waste people's time. After I sent then a lengthy explanation of my complaint about the NHS and its lack of response to my complaint after TEN months, she caseworker phones me today to say she can't give me the outcome I want (accessing the help I need), which I already knew about, but the fact that they are not bothered about the NHS's medical negligence toward me makes me think that this is just another corrupt organisation calling itself 'independent'. What a waste of my time.

The Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman are a total waste of time!. They ignore important evidence, and do their very best to support the very NHS trusts, that they are supposed to be investigating!!.

Almost a year later from initial contact, the case worker told me I must go through legal route first, which is exactly opposite as stated on the application form I filled. What a waste of my time! The caseworker also stated, whether I planned/wanted to take legal route or not, they cannot take my case on. I pointed it out, this mean all cases are excluded, what cases are in scope then? He would not answer. I trusted PHSO so much but I felt cheated and terrible after all these.
What a waste of taxpayer's money to fund this PHSO. I never expected an organisation with such an honourable word Parliamentary in its name would do such awkward thing. I’d not mind them telling the truth from the beginning – they do not deal with my kind of case.
PHSO also advise me to complete the Stage 2 process with the hospital – which wasted me another 6 months involving painful experience with the hospital as their customer service was awful, with dodgy system to block emails and applying delaying tactics to drain my energy.
PHSO’s greatest achievement of PHSO is deepening my sorrow, prolonging my stress, and adding further injustice in my case. I provided so much evidence but they ignored all.

The Parliamentary Health Service Ombudsman is a dishonest organisation. It is operated like a dodgy second-hand car dealership with a culture of immunity.
I have evidence that in my case, the caseworker lied about important documents in order to dismiss my claim. This dishonest behaviour was denied by the caseworker's manager even when shown the evidence.

A simple question was asked that they cannot answer.
If the organisation do not reply to a formal complaint then we're to people go ?

£10,000 worth of my belongings including mobility scooter were lost/stolen by staff at a mental health hospital while in safe keeping:

I sent about 20 complaints in total to the hospital, some by post, some by email, some to PALs, some to CQC, some to ward managers, some to other NHS complaint desks. These were all ignored

I then escalated to PHSO 6 months later and forwarded all complaints and receipts proving items were paid for and delivered to the hospital.

PHSO left my case hanging for over a year, finally gets back to me, tells me they're closing the case as I did not complain to the hospital first (I sent them over 20 complaints!) and because there is no evidence that I had the items on the ward (I have digital receipts they can verify are genuine with my name and the ward delivery address).

We are the few with proof who have made it this far, we used surveillance methods, we had our complaints were ignored for 6 months, we escalated to the PHSO, and here we all are.

For every one of us with proof there's probably around 200 victims without proof. Some of those victims now have less access to healthcare, or some are awaiting trial in our overcrowded prisons.

As I write this TrustPilot review I only imagine that evil nurse type laughing at how easy the PHSO has made her life.

So am I going to stop here on TrustPilot?
No.

I see multiple reviews coming in here per day. The PHSO office is in Millbank Tower in London. Maybe I can't afford lawyers, but could afford to chip in for coaches to London full of real people with proof.

I would like to visit my caseworker outside their office and ask them to kindly explain themselves for a public interview, others here may feel the same.

Display their TrustPilot 1.1/5 stars banner

I should have a look first before wasting my time with this completely useless organisation.