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Visits and investigations
Visits and investigations
Every year we visit around 1,350 individuals in hospital, other care settings, and in their own homes to find out their views and check on their care and treatment. Where appropriate, we speak to their friends or relatives too.
We instigate full-scale investigations where care or treatment have gone wrong only when the case appears to show serious failings and has implications for services across Scotland.
One of the best ways to check that people are getting the care and treatment they need is to meet with them, and ask them what they think.
We visit people in hospital, in their own home or in a care home, in secure accommodation, or in any other setting where they are receiving care and treatment.
Find out more about our visiting and watch a video here.
Local visit reports
We carry out local visits to people who are being treated or cared for in local services, such as a particular hospital ward, a local care home, local supported accommodation, the State Hospital or a prison. We publish reports after each of these visits and make recommendations for change when necessary, which we will follow up if we feel progress is not being made.
In addition to local visits, we also publish national (themed) visit reports.
For ease of reference, all non-NHS services and care homes are listed under the relevant NHS health board area.
Themed visit reports
View reports from our national, themed visits to people with similar health issues or situations across Scotland, and our monitoring visits.
Annual review of local visit recommendations
Each year, we analyse the recommendations we have made during our local visits to people in particular services or facilities. The report looks at how often we visit particular types of services, and the recommendations we make to them.
It gives the overall response rate to recommendations made during the year, and analyses the recommendations made by category and by type of service. We also give some examples of where improvements have been made which may be of interest to other services across Scotland.
Investigation reports
Our investigations focus on one person, but they have lessons for lots of people. We carry out an investigation into an individual's care and treatment when we believe there are similar issues in other people's care, and lessons to be learnt for services throughout Scotland.