Hunter New England Hospitals the most complained about: Health Care Complaints Commission

A spokesman for Hunter New England Health has said that senior members of staff had been "pencilled in'' to attend those hearings.

There have been 700 submissions to the inquiry including one from John Hunter Hospital staff saying the region's trauma service is "at risk of collapse" due to the sheer volume of severely injured patients it treats.

A "critical" lack of staff and specialists, missed diagnoses, long wait times and a lack of accessible services in Hunter New England are some of the other concerns patients and healthcare staff have raised.

Some of the complaints raised in submissions to the inquiry may also have been recorded by the Health Care Complaints Commission which says the number of complaints it receives is relatively small given the volume of health services provided across the state.

Often complaints are addressed by the relevant health service provider directly and that was becoming increasingly the case, it said.

There has been year on year grow in the number of complaints to the commission despite the impact of COVID-19 last year.

The state was tracking towards a ten per cent increase in complaints but that was reduced to 7.6 per cent due to a massive fall in complaints during April and May of 2020 when many health services were repurposed, scaled back or prohibited due to COVID-19.

The most commonly complained about issue was treatment, accounting for nearly 50 per cent of all complaints, followed by professional conduct of the health service provider, and communication.

The most commonly raised issues in the treatment category were inadequate care, inadequate treatment, and unexpected treatment outcome/complication.

Other treatment issues included rough and painful treatment, no referral or inappropriate referral, infection control and withdrawal of treatment.

As in the previous two years, the most complaints made about dental and medical practitioners was treatment-related, 54 per cent and 51 per cent respectively.

More than half of all complaints made were discontinued, making up almost 55 per cent of all assessment outcomes.

A standout issue for the commission is the number of unregistered practitioners, the report said, with many of those complaints relating to criminal actions.