According to a report one in five NHS complaints sent for independent review concern treatment or a wrong diagnosis. Any concerns raised by parents or relatives regarding their treatment are initially considered by the concerned NHS trust and if the response is not found to be satisfactory then it is referred to the Healthcare Commission.

Half of the complaints that were received were sent back to the trust as the initial response was found to be unsatisfactory. 7,827 of these complaints and 1,112 unresolved complaints of the previous year were reviewed by the commission in 2007/08.

A closer look revealed that 984 or 11 % of these were about treatment given to patients, 805 or 9 % were regarding a delay in diagnosing a condition or a wrong diagnosis, while 715 or 8% were about accessing treatment or being forced to wait.

537 or 6% of the complaints were related to the NHS staffs attitude, 1074 or 12 % were about communication and the information the patient received and 1700 or 19% were about the way a complaint was handled by the trust.

The Commission said of the total complaints almost 50 % were upheld or sent back to the trust for additional work as the initial response was not good enough. In its report on the NHS in England the Commission said, "This shows that the NHS still has much room for improvement in how it deals with complaints locally."

Compared to 2006/07 there has been a rise in some of the figures with the complaint of how the Healthcare Commission handled a complaint rising from 16 % to 19 %, regarding the standard of treatment showing an increase from 6 % to 11 % while complaints about delays in accessing care going up from 4 % to 8 %. The complaint that registered a decrease was the complaint about poor communication which dropped from 17 % to 12 %.

Anna Walker, the watchdog's Chief Executive, said, "Considering that millions of treatments are delivered by the NHS each year it is perhaps encouraging that we only receive around 8,000 complaints a year.

"However, it is concerning that around half of complainants received an inadequate response from the trust when they first complained and we required further work to be done on the complaint.

"It is also concerning that complaints raised with us continue to be about the same basic aspects of healthcare such as poor communication, inadequate treatment and failure to diagnose conditions.

"It is clear from our wider work on complaints that trusts are not always systematically learning from them and improving their services for the future as a result. They clearly need to do so."

The NHS every year delivers 380 million treatments and receives around 135,000 complaints. Till July 2008 the Commission had received 8,949 complaints and upheld 30 % of them as compared to the previous year when only 20 % were upheld. Out of these 27 % were out of the Commission’s jurisdiction as the complaint had not been raised locally first.

Nigel Edwards, policy director at the NHS Confederation which represents over 95 per cent of NHS organisations, said,  "There were 350 million treatments performed by the NHS last year and out of all this activity just under 9,000 complaints were made, 2,700 of which were upheld by the Healthcare Commission.

"Although it is reassuring that only 0.002 per cent of treatments in the NHS led to complaints, we agree with the Commission that learning from when things go wrong is a vital part of offering high quality, safe, compassionate healthcare. There are several initiatives, mainly from the Darzi review, that will help the NHS listen to what patients say and use this to improve services.

"When things do go wrong it is important that the process of complaining does not compound the original complaint, or create new concerns. The new complaints system provides NHS organisations with an opportunity to address these issues to make sure that complaints are handled better, learning from mistakes is improved and services are improved for patients."