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

City Hospital


Bad Experience

I have 3 children, my oldest sadly passed away when he was 9 months old due to brain tumour. My second was born via C-Section. Because of this, when I was pregnant with my 3rd, I had lots of midwife appointments. I felt throughout my pregnancy really stressed because of previous treatment experience. When I was 7 months pregnant I was meant to have an appointment to go through my birth plan and previous C-Section experience. However I only ended up having this appointment just two weeks before giving birth. I was really anxious and the appointment made me even more anxious, as it was really negative experience. They hadn’t read my notes about the loss of my first child and gastroenteritis during pregnancy so I had to keep repeating/re-living that traumatic experiences. All the worst case scans also made me feel very anxious and worried that something would happen to my baby. Because of the worst case scenario I was also worrying about childcare for my middle child, and how she would cope if we end up in hospital for long time etc. maybe if this appointment had been earlier I would have more time to get into positive mind set instead of very stressful last two weeks of pregnancy. In the end I had my baby at home and everything was fine. They should have been positive instead of being negative. On another occasion, whilst I was having a midwife appointment a women just walked in and started taking bloods without any explanation or introduction. I just feel that they need to remember we are all individuals regardless of their routines.