GHA complaints move to Ministry and plans scrapped for hospital entrance

The GHA complaints process will move to the Ministry for Health, minister Gemma Arias Vasquez announced on Tuesday afternoon as she confirmed that plans have been scrapped for a new entrance at St Bernard’s Hospital.

Mrs Arias Vasquez told journalists that seven weeks into her new role as Minister for Health she has introduced several initiatives focused on patients and improving patient experience.

Core to her new initiatives has been to move the complaints process to the Ministry.

The minister said this was to allow for an independent process and for the Ministry to be aware of issues arising at the GHA.

“We moved it to allow for that independence so that people feel that they can come here,” she said.

“And so that we also know what the issues are that are arising in the GHA, so that we can have some accountability on what’s happening in the GHA and we can see as well where the issues arise.”

“So we can see any clusters of information or any clusters of complaints and can see if there is a department that we feel needs to be looked at.”

When pressed on whether this was step back following the GHA’s Reset, Restart and Recover programme, which separated the functions of the GHA and the Ministry for Health, Mrs Arias Vasquez said the GHA is “still very much, very firmly in control of its own matters”.

“It is just the Complaints Department that we're moving here, like I said, to have an oversight of what it is that is happening and to allow people to have that avenue, because whether we like it or not, people will contact the Minister and the Ministry on every avenue possible,” she said.

“So we thought it was worth having that link with the Ministry and then obviously, we immediately contact the GHA with the issues and try and get to the bottom of it.”

This was echoed by GHA Director General, Kevin McGee, who said he sees this as good practice.

“It's a separation of complaints because otherwise the GHA would be looking at its own complaints. I think it gives us that independence,” he said.

“So the majority of issues that would come through to the GHA would go through to the PALS departments.”

He added that it is important to have a degree of independence when dealing with formal complaints.
“It's really important then that there's a degree of independence from the GHA so that people have the confidence that it's been reviewed and being reviewed independently,” he said.

“So this is something that we really support and I think it's an example of a really good practice.”

Mrs Arias Vasquez and Mr McGee were joined by Head of Clinical Governance Vicky O’Neil and Complaints Manager Daniel Romero during the press conference.

The complaints office under the GHA received around 10 complaints a month, with an estimated 85% of complaints being enquiries.

Mrs Arias Vasquez said the Patient Advocacy and Liaison Service (PALS) will remain under the GHA which can aid enquiries, but complaints will come directly under the Ministry.

The Ministry will be launching a video campaign to show the public how to access PALS for issues such as appointments and referrals.

“A video will be coming out in the next week or so, which will show exactly where the office is located so that people will know where to go, who to talk to, and who the key players are,” Mrs Arias Vasquez said.

HOSPITAL ENTRANCE

Mrs Arias Vasquez confirmed the plans for a new entrance at St Bernard’s Hospital had been scrapped.

The initial plan was for the £2.8m entrance to be funded by the Covid-19 donations made by the public during the peak of the pandemic.

“I think the discussion where the money is going to go to is firmly parked for now,” she said.

She added that the consultation has also ended after listening to feedback.

“We've seen the feedback, we've seen the reaction, and we thought that actually we'd put the Covid fund to a different use,” she said.

GHA CALLS

Mrs Arias Vasquez also announced another change to the system.

Currently all calls from the GHA are flagged on the recipient’s phone as from 200 72266.

If the person misses the call and later returns the call it has resulted in confusion on which department they should be put through to.

“In the next few days, when you get a phone call from the hospital, you should be able to see the department on your phone that’s calling you,” she said.

“You’ll get an actual phone number on your phone.”

“When you call that number, it’ll be John Ward or the blood department or the paediatrics department, so that you’re not calling around the hospital to try and identify where that phone call came from.”

Another change was towards the care of sponsored patients, with each patient called to check up to them.

Mrs Arias Vasquez said this was to ensure patients receiving treatment abroad still felt like they had a link with St Bernard’s Hospital at home.

“We wanted to make sure that people felt that we were there for them in their darkest moments,” she said.

The complaints office can be contacted via email on: complaints@gha.gi