I FIND your report that York NHS Trust intends to "target" people who complain more than once, to be extraordinary (July 23). Could this be related to the fact that complaints rose by 31 per cent last year?
I have made only one complaint, about the danger posed to patients' lives by long waiting times. In pursuance of this I asked the chief executive on March 24 under the openness in the NHS code to inform me how many cardiac patients have died whilst on lists.
After two and a half months he declined, claiming the information was "simply not available", and that it "would take a major audit to produce it". My request for him to review this decision, sent 34 days ago, has not been acknowledged.
The chief executive employs an information department, a Director of Performance Management, a complaints department, a nominated freedom of information representative, and also published statistics at every board meeting, all of which cost tens of thousands a year.
Why is he therefore unable to attempt to collate, as a matter of urgency, all deaths and cardiac emergencies of waiting-list patients, in order that we can hold the government to account, rather than "targeting" people who have a democratic right to complain as often as they like about the situation?
John Simpson,
Geldof Road,
York.
Updated: 09:16 Saturday, July 28, 2001
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