A health watchdog is to broaden the way it looks at suggestions made by patients and medical staff.

Airedale Community Health Council (CHC) will take a stronger view of comments made by patients about the local health service. Members of the CHC will also take a closer look at the responses from medical health providers to the points raised by local people.

The CHC's move is through its Health Action Link scheme which was created in March to gauge views from members of the public about the quality of the health service in Airedale. People enlist on a register and send in letters commenting on the standards of health-care and how it can be improved. These suggestions are then forwarded on to health-care providers including GPs and local NHS trusts.

Speaking at the latest Airedale CHC meeting, Chief officer John Godward said: "We are going to have another look at it with Bradford CHC and see what should happen to Heath Action Link, where we should promote it, how we should develop it and whether we should recruit more members.

"So far, in the case of Bradford CHC, hospitals there are really pleased with it and want to do it more and more. I've not had similar comments from Airedale NHS Trust because we are two to three months behind Bradford CHC, so when it starts to move forward I hope the trust has similar feelings.

"We have had over 116 reports and we have got up to 60 more coming in which is well in advance of the target we set ourselves. We need both good and bad comments. At the moment I would estimate 25 per cent are good comments because the standard of services is, I would think, very high. But we need to know that people do appreciate it."

Isobel Scarborough said: "I think it would be appropriate to look at responses from health care providers. I think we should remember both aspects of it."

Reports compiled by people on Health Action Link have been sent to Airedale NHS Trust, Airedale Primary Care Group and West Yorkshire Metropolitan Ambulance Service (WYMAS) for consideration.

Chief officer John Godward backed the trust's handling of Naseer Aslam, a patient at Airedale Hospital who killed his sister-in-law Mahroof Bibi after he was released back into the community in April 1996.

Mr Godward stated that the trust had made mistakes, but that it had been an 'extremely difficult case' to handle.

Mr Godward said: "Although we came out of this report well, I actually do believe we cannot be too condemnatory of Airedale Hospital in this case because it was an extremely difficult case. It wasn't a period of treatment that was completed, with gaps of three months and in other cases 12 months, so they didn't get the full picture of Mr Aslam. Although that is not to say that there weren't mistakes.

"People at Airedale are contrite about the mistakes and we must commiserate with the trust and even more to the family involved."

In a report published by Bradford Health Authority in September, Airedale NHS Trust was found guilty of failing to support Mr Aslam's family.

Speaking at this month's trust board meeting, chief executive Bob Allen said: "We have accepted the findings of the report and the action plan drawn up by the trust has now been accepted by Bradford Health Authority."

Since the tragedy, Airedale NHS Trust has published a document outlining a series of recommendations.

This includes:

the full implementation of the trust's care programme approach

an improvement in communications between agencies, parents and their carers

increased training in race awareness

single clinical and nursing records for mental health patients

a more structured approach to the training of all staff, including consultants.

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