HEALTH bosses at the trust which runs Fairfield Hospital have vowed to take action after a report revealed more than 800 complaints were made by patients last year.

A report by the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman found that of the 813 complaints made to the Pennine Acute Hospitals NHS Trust, 112 were passed on to the Ombudsman and 11 were upheld.

In addition, the report revealed that in the first quarter of 2014-15, 29 complaints were made to the trust, with four being upheld.

The Ombudsman investigates complaints from patients who feel they have received poor service from the NHS, and make recommendations when complaints are upheld.

Julie Mellor, Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman, said: "We know that poor communication, errors with diagnosis and poor care and treatment are the most common reasons why people complain to us about their hospital treatment.

"Other common reasons for complaints are staff attitude, no apology when things go wrong and unnecessary delay in treatment.

"We hope NHS leaders use the data in this report to identify themes, and recurring problems in order to understand what they have done well and how they can improve their complaint handling."

Mandie Sunderland, chief nurse at the trust, which also runs North Manchester General Hospital, Rochdale Infirmary and Royal Oldham Hospital, said many of the complaints which were upheld were related to poor communication rather than poor clinical treatment.

She said: "This is something we are taking seriously and are working hard to improve through a number of ways including specific staff training, our new 3 Steps to Excellence Nursing & Midwifery programme, the introduction of nursing metrics for monitoring standards of patient care on wards, improved information sharing between staff during nursing shift handovers and the recent investment of £1m to reintroduce supervisory ward matrons to oversee the running of our wards."

Ms Sunderland moved to reassure patients that all complaints are taken seriously and investigated.

She said: "We are the second largest non-teaching trust in England. In 2013-14 we received over 1.1 million patient visits to our four hospitals, and our community staff made over 150,000 visits to patients in their own homes.

"The vast majority of our patients were satisfied with the care and treatment provided by our staff and all of our wards and departments receive hundreds of thank-you cards and formal letters of praise complimenting the care they receive."