Nearly one in three people in England have a long term condition, and many of these conditions are ‘invisible’ or not easily noticeable to someone else.
Conditions such as depression, osteoporosis, inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), heart disease and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) could all be considered invisible.
In our State of Care 2015/16 report, we found that people with long term conditions – particularly people with mental health conditions – were less likely to report having a good experience of using services.
If you have an invisible or long term condition, we want you to tell us about the care you are receiving, good or bad. Our inspectors can’t be everywhere at once and your information will help us decide when, where and what to inspect. By telling us about your experiences, you could stop poor care happening to someone else.
#InvisibleConditions campaign
We want to hear from you about your experiences of care. Join the conversation on Twitter using the #InvisibleConditions hashtag, or tell us about your care through our website.
Your experiences
Many people with long term or ‘invisible’ conditions have experienced both good and bad care.
Standards of care
Some GP services work especially hard to listen and support people with long term conditions.
What to do if you experience poor care
If you experience poor care, you should contact the service provider in the first instance. By law, all health and social care services must have a complaints procedure.
If you are unhappy with the response, there are further steps you can take. The organisation you will need to contact will depend on who the provider is. Find out more about how you can make a complaint.
Our role
Our role as the regulator means that we do not settle individual complaints ourselves, but we still want you to tell us about your experiences of care. Your information is valuable to us. It helps us decide when, where and what to inspect, and to take action to make sure everyone gets good quality care in the future. We also want to hear about good experiences of care.