Care Opinion is a platform for public feedback about health and social care. It is not a formal complaint process, nor part of a complaint process.
We do publish feedback about the experience of making complaints in health and social care. But we can rarely publish stories where the experience being described is, or was, the subject of a formal complaint
How is sharing a story on Care Opinion different to making a formal complaint?
It is important to recognise that these are two different processes so you can make the right choice for your situation
The table below summarises some of the differences between Care Opinion and making a formal complaint.
| Care Opinion | Formal complaint |
| Informal and online | Formal and usually on paper |
| Outside the organisation | Inside the organisation |
You remain anonymous. Care Opinion does not share your details with providers | You do not remain anonymous. Complaints staff have access to Patient Records to facilitate an investigation |
| Public: everyone can read it | Private: only you and the organisation can see it |
| You may not get any response | You should always get a response |
| Multiple organisations may respond | A single organisation responds |
| Story/response statistics are not always monitored | Complaint statistics are monitored nationally |
| No power to force specific outcomes | May result in a clear action plan |
| Focus on learning and improvement | Focus on fault and accountability, as well as learning |
If you are planning to make a complaint, or have an ongoing complaint, about your care
Care Opinion will review your story in moderation, but it is likely Care Opinion would not be able to publish it. If submitting a story that is part of an ongoing complaint it is important to note that:
- When you post a story on Care Opinion, you are likely to be identifiable to the staff who are/were looking into your complaint. On Care Opinion story authors should be anonymous. This may be a reason we cannot publish your story.
- Care Opinion will not be able to publish your story if the staff being criticised are recognisable to their colleagues, or the wider general public. This is made more likely if you have already made a complaint because services will be able to triangulate the information.
- If you have a complaint in progress, you will not receive a detailed response through Care Opinion. That should come instead through the complaint process. It’s difficult for providers to respond on Care Opinion when there has been a complaint in the same way they would with anonymous stories.
- To avoid having two different communications in progress with the same organisation at the same time (a formal complaint and informal online feedback). Care Opinion will not review your story until you tell us the complaints process is completed.
If a complaint about your care is completed
If your complaint is completed, we will review your story about that care and if we think there is a low risk of you (and/or the patient) and staff being identifiable, we may be able to publish your story.
This will usually only be possible if the complaint was about procedural or environmental issues. Complaints against specific staff members would mean the service could identify you and the staff involved.
This means in a lot of cases Care Opinion will still not be able to publish your story.
Sharing a story about the complaints process
If you have made a formal complaint and would like to share a story about that process, rather than about the care experience itself, Care Opinion can review this. In some cases we can publish stories about the complaints process.
Why does Care Opinion have this policy?
Care Opinion’s mission is for “people to be able to share their experiences of health and care in ways which are safe, simple, and lead to learning and change”. Experiences of health and care may include a wide range of experiences, such as clinical, administrative or relational experiences, and may also include the experience of a formal complaint process.
In principle, we believe Care Opinion is a way to hear experiences of care that services and the public would otherwise not hear. Not every person feels comfortable raising a formal complaint and may wish to share anonymously instead. Alternatively, people may have criticisms about their care that they want the service to hear and respond to, but they are not “serious” enough for the author to engage in a lengthy complaints process.
For story authors: research from the NIHR Inquire UK study (Oxford University) suggests that important motivations for authors posting care experiences online include “informing other patients” and “improving standards of care”. There is much evidence of authors achieving these goals when they post their story on Care Opinion. A formal complaint on the other hand is a way to focus on service accountability and responsibility. Care Opinion believes both of these processes are important.
For health/care providers and the wider system: It is acknowledged that there is much variation in the quality of provider complaint handling (see for example cross-UK work on the Complaint Standards Framework). Formal channels for feedback about complaints processes exist, and Care Opinion may add an informal channel alongside these, just as it does for care more generally.
Sharing a story on Care Opinion is not a way to reopen your complaint, or reach a different complaint outcome.
If you have been unhappy with the complaint process, you may be planning to escalate your case to a health service ombudsman. If so, you should check whether posting on Care Opinion (or receiving a response from the care provider on Care Opinion) could cause a delay to the ombudsman accepting your case.
There is a health service ombudsman in each country of the UK:
England: https://www.ombudsman.org.uk/
Scotland: https://www.spso.org.uk/spso
Wales: https://www.ombudsman.wales/
Northern Ireland: https://nipso.org.uk/nipso/