Right to Respond

As part of our commitment to providing an honest and transparent view of health and social care services, Healthwatch Birmingham encourages providers to respond to comments the public have left.

Alongside ensuring providers can have a fair say in discussions about their services, replying to reviews demonstrates evidence of responding to patient feedback for the CQC, who regularly monitor our Feedback Centre. It is also an effective way to recruit service users for any wider engagement work at your organisation.

Guidelines for provider responses:

  • Keep language appropriate and civil
  • Remain professional and treat people’s comments fairly
  • Engage with the content of the review by addressing specific points and avoid cut and pasting a standard response
  • Don’t disclose the service user’s personal details or any potentially identifying information
  • Where appropriate leave organisational contact details e.g PALS or patient engagement teams for people to get further information

Remember: your response will be seen by everyone who uses the Feedback Centre, not just the original reviewer. All responses are moderated in accordance with our moderation policy.

For full terms and conditions, including a guide to how right to reply works for service providers download this guide.

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Original feedback for

Heartlands Hospital


Treatment is good but discharge was a disaster

My dad recently spend 2 weeks in Heartlands and while there are no real complaints about his stay when it came to him been discharged the entire process was a disaster. The communication was horrid which just caused unnecessary stress. How hard is it to inform patient and family when they will be discharged preferably a day or 2 before so everyone is ready? In our case I turned up to visit and was told he 'might' be discharged that day, he knew nothing about it and upon inquiring nobody would give me a clear answer so we were just waiting not knowing what was happening. Eventually he was discharged 12 hours later at midnight leaving us with a near hour drive home so late at night when he still wasn't feeling 100% and was very tired was very difficult for him. And despite repeated asking we were also never told that he would be expected to administer his own injections and so he was not shown how to do so. We ended up having to call our GP the following day who reluctantly sent out a district nurse who was horrified that he'd been discharged without us been told about his care plan and medication.