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.

Your reply

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Original feedback for

Dr Chitre


Obtaining an appointment is very difficult

Every time you ring for appointment either the phone is engaged or they say we no more appointments left. There should be call back service so patients lose their place in the queue. In particular for elderly patients it’s difficult to make repeated calls for appointments, For example I rang yesterday morning 2 minutes pass 9am I was told no appointments left and then rang 5pm and I was no appointments left. Then I rang this morning 9am and the answering machine message was saying we have reached to our full capacity and unable to answer your call please try later on. Subsequently I rang again and manage to obtain an appointment for today with the Dr, he treated me with respect and dignity. But the appointment system needs to be reviewed in order to work out a mechanism to make it easier for service users.