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

Umbrella Whittall Street Clinic


This service was a bad idea

I am old enough to remember this service before it was umbrella and considering UK claim to be leading in healthcare, this is a huge decline in quality of care compared to what it was, and speed of service also declined, the whole thing is bad. The phone staff are amongst the worst I've ever dealt with and the on-site staff at smaller locations seem to leave and change the hours when they please. For people who treat this like a routine doctors appointment for regular health checks (because you should whether you have a new partner or are in a long term relationship) that for regular health-checkers there should be a better service where you can choose to pay for the testing, with trained staff that can make and stick to appointments, it's a very bad service all-round and just today I turned up for an appointment but apparently the branch now closes early, so why make the appointment and why not call to cancel, and who is paying for my lost time and fuel, its below 1* and sometimes even if something is free that doesn't make it good enough to tell people they should be grateful for it, especially when it's not what it says it is on the tin.