The Department of Health today published statistics on complaint issues and compliments received by the six Health and Social Care (HSC) Trusts during 2022/23. It also includes information on complaints against Family Practitioner Services in Northern Ireland for the year ending 31 March 2023

• The highest percentage of complaint issues received in 2022/23 related to the 'Accident & Emergency' specialty (1,211, 15.8%) (Table 7).
• Of the 5,033 complaints received, the median age of the patient / client was 45 years (Figure 9).
• On average HSC Trusts took 31.9 working days to provide a substantive response to complaints received in 2022/23 (Table 9, Figure 14).
• During 2022/23, 26,474 compliments (via card, email, feedback form, care opinion, letter, social media or telephone) were received by HSC Trusts in Northern Ireland (Table 16, Figure 22).
• Of the 26,474 compliments received by HSC Trusts, 11,946 (45.1%) related to 'Quality of Treatment & Care', 8,327 (31.5%) to 'Staff Attitude & Behaviour', 2,398 (9.1%) to 'Information & Communication', 2,202 (8.3%) to 'Environment', and 1,601 (6.0%) to 'Other' subjects (Table 16, Figure 21).

Last Five Years (2018/19 - 2022/23)

• Since 2018/19, the number of complaint issues received by HSC Trusts increased from 6,049 to 7,671 in 2022/23 (Table 1, Figure 2).
• Over the last five years, all six HSC Trusts reported an increase in the number of complaint issues received; with the largest increase (68.1%) reported by the Southern Trust (Table 1, Figure 2).
• Between 2018/19 and 2022/23, the largest increase in the number of complaint issues (620, 17.1%) was reported in the 'Acute' POC (3,626 to 4,246) (Table 3).
• Complaint's' issues relating to Family Practitioner Services decreased (109, 34.4%) in 2022/23 compared to the 2018/19 year (Table 10, Figure 15).

The information release is published on the Departmental website at: https://www.health-ni.gov.uk/articles/complaints-statistics