Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman Avis 

Waste of tax people's money
Does not look at facts. Only there to defend and lie on behalf of GPs.

Absolutely shocking service. Not fit for purpose. I doubt whether they even looked at my case properly
Wont go into detail or id be here forever!
This company is definitely one sided
Shocking! Absolutely shocking!

Worse than a 1* reviewed travel insurance claims company. Ist tier staff hopeless. No wonder hospitals are so keen to suggest that any complaint be directed to them.

my emg entirely proved the phso surgeons prediction to be wrong entirely wrong !!! the phso let their surgeons report stand despite my emg report written within days of the phso surgeons report , what madness is this ????!!!!

There is actually no real purpose of value to this organisation. They had me on the phone for 15 minutes to then tell me that they won't be taking my case. Judging by everybody else's reviews this seems to be the case for nearly everybody. There is actually no purpose in them existing. It possibly costs more to keep them in existence than it does for the work that is carried out. Bunch of uneducated clowns. They know this could throw me over the edge and you've won. You win.

What is the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman in the UK?

A cemetery for patients’ complaints.
A formal funeral for patients’ concerns.
The last nail in the coffin.

Another useless bureaucratic structure filled with paper pushers and functionaries, funded by public money.

Simply a presence intended to reassure the public through performative independent oversight.

Same experience as the other 500+ one-star reviews. Please note that an email sent to me states: “We’re changing our name. Later this year we will become the Public Service Ombudsman. This will make it easier for people to find us and understand what we do. The service we provide will remain the same.” Yes, different name, same one-star low-tier service that accomplishes absolutely nothing!

I contacted the ombudsman after receiving an unsatisfactory response from my wife's surgery. After my wife visited the doctor he sent what turned out to be a referal to the hospital that down played my wife's condition to the extent that the referal was refused. He knew 5 days later but I didn't find out for 6 weeks. He did not make any effort to try again and I persuaded the hospital that she must be seen. To cut a long story short she was not seen by a consultant until 3 months later. She was then prescribed the correct medication but by then a blood clot had formed in her heart and it dislodged and she had a stroke followed by another and died. NICE guidelines say that it is important for AFib that early medication is important.
Anyway my complaint reached the ombudsman a d there experts firstly refused to address the poorly worded referal and secondly said it didn't matter when medication was started. Although this goes against NICE the ombudsman backed the doctor. I believe that all that was important for them was to back the doctor although I am certain that it was his weak referal and his subsequent lack of action that delayed the correct medication being prescribed that led to her death. If he had referred correctly I am confident she would ha e received an emergency appointment. Just when you want the establishment to get you justice they are only interested in looking after the doctors.

As with every other review on here, the Ombudsman are a heinous corrupt organisation that do absolutely nothing to forward the claims of NHS patients. I went through an incredibly difficult situation having a surgery on the NHS where they didn't do proper consent procedures and did not take proper care of me pre- or post- surgery, and the Ombudsman came back to me and categorically ignored every single one of my concerns, siding with the NHS response at every turn. The Ombudsman only exists to let the government and NHS pretend that there is any oversight happening, it's a farce and I am disgusted at the way this has been dealt with.

The Parliamentary Health Ombudsman appears to operate as a corporate entity primarily focused on protecting health services rather than ensuring accountability. Instead of addressing concerns transparently, they often allow health providers to make unsubstantiated claims without requiring proper evidence. Case workers, failed to conduct thorough investigations and tend to accept doctors’ and nurses’ statements at face value. This approach undermines the quality of healthcare and contributes to rising corruption.

Additionally, organisations like the CQC and PALS seem to reinforce the existing system rather than challenge it, making it difficult for patients to receive fair and decent services.

Submitted a complaint about my dentist. Took an absolute age for any response.
Have used other ombudsman services and there is usually some dialogue prior to a decision being made.
No dialogue or consultation just a decision made that was in the dentists favour.
Looked very much to me like they side with the practitioner and just want to close cases down die to having a backlog.
Dentist was clearly at fault so only way forward now is the legal route.
Should not be this way....very poor all round.

If you have a serious grievance with solid grounds, whatever you do, do not go down this route. Take legal action, no matter how daunting that sounds. Like most Ombudsmen, they are there to protect the multicorps/institution that they profess to police. They will drag it out for as long as humanly possible aswell, gaslight level. And once used, you've got basically no option. Take the offenders to court.

PS
Interesting kwinkydinky: Their logo is 666. Not a Jesus vs Satan person myself but interesting and apt all the same.

Good luck, I wish I'd looked on here before making the mistake I did.

Completely discriminating against autistic people and learning disabilities the corrupt system investigating themselves they're only there to protect the system the abuse continues

Absolutely dire and sheer and utter incompetence. They took 20 months to not investigate properly and then did not get the right medical evdience independently reviewed and checked which was critical evidence. I can only conclude this is because the staff are none medical and do not have a clue what they are doing. This government department should be closed down and disbanded to save the tax payer some money. There is not enough accountability of this organisation as it appears they can do what they like with little option for the complianant to object and take further apart from a Judicial Review which most people cannot afford.

Seeing the ombudsman is dismissive towards disability discrimination under the equality act 2010 it's shocking.

Reading the other reviews, my complaint response from phso now makes sense. I was extremely shocked by the blaming, wording and dismissive tone. I am thoroughly convinced they are in fact in place to protect the nhs, allowing poor practice to continue to harm patients despite our national insurance paying for the service. It is vile and truly sickening that there are no true bodies one can go to. Extremely disappointed and would not recommend. Truly shocking.

Would give zero if I could.
Complete waste of time and energy.
Formal service complaint against them staff at multiple levels and only trite word that they didnt do things correctly. No improvement or action against staff who failed and still fail to provide service.
Pointless.

The PHSO is a wretched, fraudulent sham.

I obtained proof, via a Subject Access Request, that my caseworker had sat twiddling her thumbs for a year, pretending to investigate, but doing nothing except sending me petty, pernickety requests to reiterate what I'd already told her.

This is a deliberate technique to "run the clock down", i.e. to push the matter outside the PHSO's remit due to the length of time since it happened.

This is all part of the Modus Operandi of the PHSO - avoid investigating the NHS by any means necessary.

My caseworker ignored all my irrefutable and damning evidence of medical negligence by my GP surgery, e.g. ignoring my test results and deleting evidence of their own failures.

My Subject Access Request to get a copy of my caseworker's file revealed that she made ONE phone call to my GP surgery, which ironically they didn't even answer! That was the full extent of her so-called "investigation". Truly abysmal and laughable.

When I complained about my caseworker's lack of investigation, I got a snappy, arrogant, knee-jerk reply from her manager saying she'd done nothing wrong. He didn't even address my individual points.

The PHSO is a dishonest and despicable organisation. My MP has ignored my letters, so I have nowhere left to turn (I can't afford the legal fees for Judicial Review of the PHSO's misconduct).

The PHSO is a sham entity, a total fraud, and a waste of taxpayer money. It leaves people with absolutely nowhere left to turn after they have been failed by the NHS.

Plot twist: Within just a few hours of me posting this review, the PHSO put in a complaint to Trustpilot because I'd named my caseworker. Wow! So it seems the PHSO are capable of being razor sharp and taking swift remedial action... when it comes to looking after themselves. Such an impressive level of service. Yet when the PHSO were tasked with investigating gross negligence by my GP surgery, they spent a year doing absolutely nothing.

After a very distressing experience with NHS therapy, I discovered that my raw session notes had been shared with my GP without my permission. What made this even more upsetting was that the notes contained inaccurate and untrue allegations about my husband, someone I had not discussed during these sessions, aside from mentioning that I lived with him.
I raised a complaint with both my GP and the Trust, requesting that these notes be removed, but my request was refused and my care has been negatively impacted as a result. I then spent nearly a year going back and forth following the NHS complaints procedure, and with various regulatory bodies , which felt like hitting a brick wall. Throughout the process, I felt dismissed and undermined, and the experience was unnecessarily adversarial - at times it seemed designed to discourage me from pursuing the matter further.

Eventually, I escalated my complaint to the Ombudsman. Unfortunately, this proved equally disappointing. My case was closed almost immediately, without proper consideration of the evidence. The reason given was that I had not followed the NHS complaints procedure, which is incorrect and something I have clear evidence of and had explained in my complaint to the ombudsman.
When I challenged this, the case handler openly admitted that they had not reviewed my evidence before making their decision. I was also told that I had submitted my evidence electronically as a PDF; however, this is untrue, as all of my evidence had only just been sent by post. Subsequently, I was informed that there was no evidence on file, which directly contradicts both my submission and their earlier statements. Although it was later acknowledged that the case had been closed prematurely, I was also given misleading information about how it had been handled. How were they able to close my case when they hadn’t even looked at any of the evidence?

During my interaction with the case handler, I found his conduct to be dismissive and hostile. He repeatedly spoke over me in a raised voice, which felt intimidating and appeared intended to dominate the conversation - he seemed to get great satisfaction from this and I was not given a fair opportunity to fully explain my concerns.
In my view, the Ombudsman process itself warrants an investigation.

Just don't bother, they are truly terrible. Can't communicate, have no sense of moral compass and truly don't care. I can see that no one has any trust in them at all.