How to make a complaint

Contact our Patient Advice and Liaison service (PALS) first if you have any questions or concerns about your ongoing care or treatment.

If something has gone wrong during your care, you can submit a formal complaint. Please tell us as soon as you're aware something has happened, or within 12 months of that date.

We will then investigate your complaint. We will aim to share our response with you within 35 working days.

The details of your complaint or concern are confidential, and are stored separately to your medical records.

Remember, your feedback will not affect your current or future care.

How to complain

The first step is to write down what happened, and when.

Remember to include:

  • your name
  • contact information
  • NHS number if you know it
  • what happened and when.

Use headings, numbered lists or bullet points: ordering the events as they happened will help us investigate your claims).

The Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman has some useful tips on making a complaint to the NHS in England.

If you're complaining on the behalf someone else, please remember to include their details.

Using AI to help you feedback about your care

While we always suggest you use your own words, artificial intelligence (AI) can help you:

  • organise your thoughts
  • write your feedback or complaint.

You do this by using prompts. Prompts are short instructions that tell AI what you want help with.

To help us investigate the right issues, please make sure your prompt includes:

  • your experience, along with dates and times
  • how your experience made you feel.

If you do use AI to write your feedback, check the information is correct before you send it.

Please do not:

  • share your personal information with AI
  • share others' personal information with AI
  • ask AI to add legal arguments or reference laws to make your complaint sound more official.

The Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman has published useful prompts for Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools to help with your complaint.

Help to be heard

If you need help making a complaint, you can contact an advocacy organisation who can help you to be heard.

Tell us online

  1. I would like to make a complaint about my own experience

    Use this form to send us a complaint about your experience at our hospitals or clinics

  2. I would like to make a complaint on behalf of someone else

    Use this form to send us a complaint on behalf of someone else, like your next of kin, or a family member

You can also write to us

Write to us:

Patient Relations Team 
Northwick Park Hospital 
Watford Road 
Harrow 
Middlesex 
HA1 3UJ

If you can’t submit your complaint in writing, call us on 020 8869 2026 to discuss other options.

What happens next

Once we receive your complaint, we will acknowledge it within three working days. We’ll tell you when we aim to send you our response.

We will then investigate your complaint. Once the investigation is complete, we can either:

  1. Send you a letter outlining our findings
  2. Meet to discuss the outcome.

Tell us if you're not happy with our response

Firstly, tell us if you’re unhappy with our response. We may reinvestigate your complaint, or review our findings from our investigation. And if we find something new, we’ll let you know.

If you're still unhappy with our response, you can write to the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO).

The PHSO will only consider your complaint once we've completed our investigation.