This past year has seen a more than 10% increase across the board for complaints from patients about their doctors and the healthcare facilities where they were attended to. There were 96,000 written complaints against hospitals and community health services and 44,000 against family health services.

There was an 11% increase in the number of complaints against hospitals and a 12% increase against general practitioners. Experts differ as to why there is such an increase. Some believe it's as simple as the NHS is getting worse, while others think easier methods for complaining may account for the increase.

Patients who are more assertive and aware of their rights may be causing the increase as well. Most patient and consumer rights groups, though, believe that the system for complaining is problematic and question if these statistics on the numbers of complaints tell us anything.

The Consumer's Association say that the complaints system in the NHS is time consuming and frustrating for patients. Most patients feel that it is stacked against them and, therefore, a waste of time. Many do not understand how it works or feel that if they do complain nothing of value will come out of the process. The Commission for Health Improvement (CHI) says that there is a "culture of complacency" within the NHS when it comes to handling patients' complaints.

In September of this year, the Health Department issued it evaluation report of the complaints system in the NHS. They carried out a two-year study looking at the procedures in the complaint system and how effective they were. The report was critical of the system and recommended that it be made independent of the NHS. Only 20-30% of the people surveyed by the group preparing the report said that they were satisfied with the time that the procedure took. The majority surveyed believed that the system was biased towards the medical personnel.77% who had requested for an independent review of their case said that the process took too long.

Currently, if a patient has a complaint about clinical negligence their only option is to follow legal pathways that are time consuming, complicated and costly. Edward Hobson, a senior policy advisor at the Consumer's Association, told the BBC, "For smaller value claims, patients ought be able to get compensation within the complaints system". That is currently not the case though the NHS Litigation Authority is looking into coming up with a system that will deal faster and more efficiently with small compensation claims without taking the litigation route.

The government admits that the current system can be improved and is planning a widespread reform of the complaints procedures in 2002.