Members of the public are invited to have their say on proposals to update and improve the way complaints about health and social care services are handled.

The public consultation on a ’wide-ranging’ series of proposed reforms is now live on the online consultation hub and open until Monday, October 18.

It will also explain a ’two-pronged approach’ to reforming the complaints process.

The government said that new regulations will modernise specific aspects of the current process in the short term, while longer-term reform will require new primary legislation - with a comprehensive review of the complaints process planned as part of the new Health and Social Care Reform Bill.

The consultation sets out the scope of this Bill in simple terms.

Participants are guided through the document topic by topic, and invited to make comments at each stage.

Key proposals in the first part include offering enhanced support for members of the public with concerns about services, alongside clear guidance and information about how to make a complaint.

Feedback is invited on whether support services such as the new Manx Care Advice and Liaison Service should be provided on a statutory basis. This service aims to resolve patients’ and service users’ concerns at an early stage preventing them escalating into complaints.

Comment is also invited on proposals for an independent advocacy service to help people understand their rights and express their views.

Other proposals include creating a simpler complaints process, increasing the timescale for lodging a complaint, improving the training of those handling complaints and keeping complainants better informed about the progress of investigations.

Also tabled is a requirement for prompt remedial action to be taken to improve services when lessons are learned from a complaint.

Part two of the consultation deals with longer-term reforms.

These include whether the Department of Health and Social Care should set complaints handling quality standards for providers, and whether all health and care providers, including private operators, should have a statutory complaints process.

This section also considers the creation of an independent adjudicator or Ombudsman for the review of all health and social care complaints.

The paper explains how the DHSC is ultimately responsible for oversight of a ’high quality’ complaints process, while Manx Care is responsible for the complaints handling procedure for services it provides to the public directly.

The background to the review is that one of Sir Jonathan Michael’s key recommendations from his 2019 report into the health service was to ’ensure that patients and service users are at the centre of the planning and delivery of health and social care services’.

It follows on from a Tynwald motion in April which sought an overhaul of the complaints process and called for revised regulations to be brought before it in November.

The consultation is at: www.gov.im