HCRG Care Group apologises after over 100 complaints in West
Patients and staff raise over 100 complaints about HCRG, covering missed appointments and delayed urgent care; the company apologises but defends its new phone system.
The Full Story
A plain summary built from the channels that reported this story.
A private company running community healthcare services across Bath, Swindon and Wiltshire has apologised after receiving more than 100 complaints from patients and frontline staff. The complaints, passed to a Wiltshire MP, include delays to urgent nursing care and missed appointments, with many focusing on a new single point of access telephone system.
Deborah, a Swindon patient who relies on community nurses for painful leg ulcers, described how visits had become unreliable. She said: "I could have had an infection and been at the hospital or been on a drip again or had sepsis." Her case is one of many now documented by the MP.
The company, HCRG Care Group, has defended the new call handling system, saying it replaced a fragmented service with more than 200 access points. In an exclusive interview, a representative said: "We had over 200 access points. It was a very fragmented service and our patients and service users were asking for change." They acknowledged "some challenges in the first couple of weeks" and apologised, adding that the service had "very much improved now."
However, the MP and patients remain unconvinced, pointing to ongoing failures. Frontline staff, including a district nurse who contacted the BBC, say workloads have risen sharply since HCRG took over. The concerns echo an earlier story about 77-year-old Maureen Harris, who died in 2024 after her daughter repeatedly failed to get urgent help, with one call back taking 18 hours.
HCRG insists patient safety and quality of care are its absolute priority. When asked about profit, the representative said: "I have never had to make a decision based on profit." But the MP said patients expect real improvements, not just promises.
On screen
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Key Claims
Claims reported during this story's coverage, mapped by channel. Ordered by how many channels carried each claim.
| Claim | BBC One |
|---|---|
| An MP received over 100 complaints about HCRG Care Group from patients and staff. | |
| HCRG Care Group apologised for early problems with its single point of access phone system. | |
| HCRG Care Group defended the new system as replacing a fragmented service with over 200 access points. |
Channel Perspectives
What each channel focused on, with key quotes.
The BBC focused on patient stories and the human impact, using a specific case (Deborah) and referencing a previous investigation into a patient's death. It also gave weight to frontline staff concerns and challenged HCRG's defence in an exclusive interview, pressing the company on whether faster phone answering translates to actual care.
- “I could have had an infection and been at the hospital or been on a drip again or had sepsis.”
- “We had over 200 access points. It was a very fragmented service and our patients and service users were asking for change.”
- “It's very easy to answer a phone more quickly, but are you actually then providing what's needed? That's the big question.”
Broadcast Timeline
News broadcasts tracked for this story, in time order.