An exploratory study of complaints handling and nature

Abstract

Different countries have different complaints handling systems. This study reveals general pathways to handling complaints that provide an overview at the case hospital as well as a general complaints handling picture in Taiwan. It explores hospital complaints and how hospital staff handle them. A large teaching hospital in Taiwan was purposefully chosen as a case study. Data were collected through in-depth interviews, document analysis and interrogating a 3-year complaints archive. The study found that dissatisfaction with 'humaneness' and 'care/treatment' commonly causes the case hospital patients to complain. Understanding complaint patterns, therefore, can help hospital managers improve organizational performance, which shows that certain service provision needs to be prioritized if hospital staff intend to improve service quality.

Patient complaints in healthcare systems: a systematic review and coding taxonomy

“…6 Healthcare organisations receive huge volumes of complaints (eg, over 100 000 annually on hospital care in the NHS), and complaints can focus on diverse problems (from car parking to prescribing errors), describe different types of harm (eg, physical, emotional), have legal or malpractice implications, and have different underlying aims (eg, resolving dissatisfaction, creating change, preventing future issues). [7][8][9] The level of standardisation of techniques used to analyse patient complaints is unclear, and there may be benefit in developing a standardised and Open Access Scan to access more free content reliable taxonomy for analysing and interpreting (in terms of patient safety) complaint data. To achieve this, we provide the first systematic review of empirical research on patient complaints.…”

Why service users do not complain or have ‘voice’: a mixed-methods study from Nepal’s rural primary health care system

“…It is increasingly recognized that patients as consumers of health care services, can provide critical feedback and valuable information to health care system by voicing their complaints and suggestions [1, 2]. Many countries such as the United Kingdom, have introduced health service reforms with introduction of commercial elements and market influences in the health sector in the 1980’s which gave rise to patients’ complaints as a management tool to improve health service accountability and responsiveness [2–4].…”

“…Many countries such as the United Kingdom, have introduced health service reforms with introduction of commercial elements and market influences in the health sector in the 1980’s which gave rise to patients’ complaints as a management tool to improve health service accountability and responsiveness [2–4]. Indeed, the ideology guiding the patients’ complaints mechanisms can be linked to the increasing trend of consumerism in health care [4].…”

“…To date, many studies have been conducted in high-income countries such as the United Kingdom, Australia, United States, Taiwan, New Zealand, France and Finland [2, 6] and, more recently, in some middle-income countries such as China and Vietnam [7, 15]. These studies have tended to focus on the different aspects and features of complaints: the complaint numbers/frequency; complainant and respondent profiles, nature, types, outcomes and reasons for complaints; barriers to complaining; and the impact of complaint management programs [2, 9, 14, 16–21]. For example, studies have found that the number of patient complaints is rising internationally [9, 22].…”

Not another Complaint!

“…The complaints can focus on a diverse set of problems, from car parking to medical negligence. Patients lodge complaints for a variety of reasons from resolving dissatisfaction, to create change, or to prevent future issues [4,5]. One of the reasons for looking at complaints and learning from them is to allow for trainees to prevent and or reduce their future associated patient complaints when they take up responsibility as a consultant.…”