The NHS harmed me. That’s a sentence that takes a great deal of courage to say. Because most of us grow up trusting the NHS completely and rightly so. It is staffed by thousands of dedicated, skilled people who do extraordinary work under immense pressure. But sometimes, things go wrong. When they do, the people left dealing with the consequences often don’t reach for a solicitor straight away.
What they reach for is answers.
What happened? Why did it happen? Could it have been prevented? Who knew what and when? These are the questions that keep people awake at night. Not the potential compensation, but the truth. Yet the system they turn to for those answers is one of the most complicated, draining and frustrating processes a person can face.
This guide explains why getting answers from the NHS is so difficult, how Liberay Legal can help you through the complaints process and what your options are if the answers you receive still don’t add up.
Why People Don't Always Want to Sue – They Want to Know What Happened
When something goes wrong during medical care, most people’s first instinct isn’t to make a claim. It’s to understand what happened. To make sense of something that has turned their life, or the life of someone they love, upside down.
Research consistently shows that the majority of patients who raise complaints or take legal action against the NHS do so primarily because they want an explanation and an apology. They want to know that what happened to them won’t happen to someone else. They want accountability, not just a payout.
That is a completely understandable response. The NHS has a legal duty of candour – which means it is required by law to be open and honest with patients when something goes wrong. In theory, that means you should be able to get a clear explanation of what happened without having to fight for it.
In practice, it rarely works that way.
Why Is It So Hard to Get Answers from the NHS?
The NHS complaints process was designed to give patients a way to raise concerns and get a proper response. But for many people, the reality is a process that feels slow, confusing and, at times, more focused on protecting the organisation than on genuinely helping the patient.
There are a number of reasons why this happens.
The system is made up of lots of separate parts. Your care may have involved your GP, a hospital, a specialist clinic and an out-of-hours service, all of which are separate organisations with their own complaints processes and their own records. Getting one clear account of what happened across all of them can be very difficult.
NHS trusts look into their own cases. When you raise a complaint, the organisation you are complaining about will typically carry out its own internal investigation. The people reviewing your care may work alongside the people who provided it. Even without any deliberate bias, this can lead to findings that are incomplete or written in a way that plays down what went wrong.
Medical records aren’t always complete. Notes may be missing, hard to read or simply not reflect what actually happened. And sometimes, records that do exist aren’t included when you ask for your file.
Medical language can be a real barrier. Even when you do get a response, it is often written in clinical terms that are difficult to follow. What reads as a straightforward explanation may, on closer inspection, actually acknowledge that something went wrong or leave out details that a specialist would immediately notice.
The whole process takes an enormous amount of energy. Chasing responses, following up on complaints and dealing with forms and letters while you are also managing your health or your grief is exhausting. Many people give up not because their case isn’t strong, but because the system wears them down.
How the NHS Complaints Process Works
If you want to raise a concern about your care, there is a formal route to follow. Knowing how it works from the start can make a real difference.
Step 1: Complain directly to the provider
Your first step is to contact the NHS organisation involved whether that’s your GP practice, hospital or another healthcare provider. You can do this in writing or by phone, though putting it in writing gives you a clear record. You will find details of who to address your complaint to and the contact details on the Hospital or GP website, and you should do this within 12 months of the incident, or within 12 months of realising that something may have gone wrong.
The provider should acknowledge your complaint within three working days and give you a full response within 40 working days. More complicated complaints often take longer, and delays are common.
Step 2: Escalate if you’re not satisfied
If the response you receive doesn’t address your concerns, you can take your complaint to the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO). The PHSO can look into complaints that haven’t been resolved, although it cannot award compensation and its investigations can take a long time.
Step 3: Get legal advice
If the complaints process still hasn’t given you the answers you need, or if it has confirmed that something did go wrong and you want to understand where you stand legally, speaking to a specialist medical negligence solicitor can make a real difference.
A solicitor can help you get hold of your medical records, bring in an independent medical expert to review what happened and advise you on whether what you experienced amounts to negligence. Importantly, they can do all of this even if your main goal is still to get answers rather than make a claim. The two things are not mutually exclusive.
At Liberay Legal, we can help you with every step of the complaints process and advise on every step of the way.
What Types of Claims Are the Most Complex?
Not all medical negligence cases are the same. Some are more complicated than others, and it helps to understand why, both so you know what to expect and so you can make sure you have a solicitor with the right experience.
Birth injuries
Cases involving birth injuries are some of the hardest and most emotionally demanding in this area of law. They often involve serious, life-changing harm to a child with effects that ripple through the whole family for years. Working out exactly what went wrong during a delivery and whether things could have gone differently, requires specialist expert input and a detailed review of what can be very lengthy records. Our team has significant experience in this area and we treat every one of these cases with the seriousness it deserves.
Cancer misdiagnosis
Cases where a cancer was missed or diagnosed much later than it should have been are common, but they are rarely straightforward. The central question isn’t just whether the cancer diagnosis came late, but whether catching it earlier would genuinely have made a difference to the outcome. This requires input from a specialist oncologist and a solid understanding of how the particular cancer behaves. Where a patient has since died, a family member can bring a claim on behalf of the estate, which brings its own additional steps.
GP negligence
GP negligence cases can be harder to prove than claims against hospitals, partly because GPs regularly have to make difficult judgement calls with limited time and information. Showing that a GP fell below the standard expected of a competent doctor, rather than simply making a tough call in difficult circumstances, requires careful expert analysis. These cases often come down to what the GP did or didn’t do at a specific appointment, which makes the quality of the clinical notes particularly important.
Cases involving more than one provider
When your care passed through several different NHS organisations and the problem may have occurred at one, more than one or in the handover between them, establishing who was responsible becomes much harder. These cases require records from multiple sources and a careful review of where things went wrong and when.
How Can Liberay Legal Help?
At Liberay Legal, our medical negligence team is led by Carlos Lopez, who has more than 30 years of specialist experience in this area. He is a member and assessor for the Law Society’s Clinical Negligence Accreditation Scheme and has helped clients recover multi-million pound settlements in some of the most complex cases in the field.
But beyond the experience, what we hear most often from clients is that they came to us because they felt listened to. Because someone finally took their concerns seriously and helped them understand what had happened.
Here is what we can do for you.
Help you get hold of your medical records and make sense of what they say – including anything that may have been missed or not properly recorded.
Bring in an independent medical expert to give an honest view of whether the care you received fell below the standard you should have had and, if so, what difference that made to your health.
Support you through the complaints process. You don’t have to choose between making a formal complaint and exploring a legal claim. We can help you do both where that makes sense, and explain how the two fit together.
Handle the legal side of things for you. From the first formal letter to a negotiated settlement or, if necessary, court proceedings, we take care of the process so that you can focus on your recovery.
Work on a no win, no fee basis. There is nothing to pay upfront and nothing at all if your claim doesn’t succeed. You can get proper advice and understand your options with no financial risk.
You Deserve More Than Just a Templated Letter
If the NHS harmed you, you are entitled to know what happened. You are entitled to an honest explanation, a genuine apology and, where negligence occurred, proper redress. The fact that getting those things means fighting through a complicated system is not a reflection of the strength of your case, it is a reflection of the system’s shortcomings.
You do not have to navigate it alone.
Whether you are at the very beginning and don’t know where to start, or you have already been through the complaints process and are still without the answers you came for, our team is here to help.
Get in touch with Liberay Legal today for a free, no-obligation conversation with one of our specialist medical negligence solicitors. We’ll listen, we’ll be straight with you about what we think and we’ll be with you every step of the way.
Contact us here or call 03330 115 105.
