The Scottish Consumer Council’s (SCC) ‘Call for Improvement’ conference will highlight systematic failures in the way that the NHS dealt with inquiries from service users and consider how a “gold standard” of customer service can be achieved for Scottish tax payers. It follows the publication of the SCC’s findings of a survey using ‘Mystery shoppers’ to target all Scotland’s NHS Boards.

Cabinet Secretary for Health and Wellbeing, Nicola Sturgeon will address the conference to confirm that all of Scotland’s NHS Boards are implementing the report’s recommendations, and will also explore the Scottish Government’s vision for an integrated health information strategy for the NHS in Scotland. The conference will also hear from Scottish Public Services Ombudsman Professor Alice Brown on how public bodies can learn from service users’ complaints.

SCC chair, Douglas Sinclair, who will kick the event off, says the standard of communication with service users is something that needs to be addressed urgently: “We find it remarkable that there are still a significant number of public bodies that don’t appear to have a policy or strategy for how inquiries are dealt with.  The lack of consistent training of people handling inquiries also showed through in the research we undertook.”