Doctors risks of formal patient complaints and the challenge of predicting complaint behaviour

Spittal et al recently presented the readers of this journal with a simple and reliable scoring system for predicting doctors’ risk of becoming the subject of patient complaints.1 Development of such measures can probably promote constructive use of complaint information, decrease patient dissatisfaction, prevent substandard care and target quality improvement interventions. Using patient complaints constructively, however, necessitates consideration of the manifold facets of patient complaints and behaviours related to making complaints. Patients may have rather different motivations and thresholds for complaining about healthcare delivery and it remains unclear to what degree complaint patterns and over-represented doctor categories provide a balanced reflection of substandard healthcare and quality problems. Furthermore, empirical data are limited about whether complaint risk is actually sensitive to quality improvement interventions and health provider changes (eg, exhortation to undertake continuing medical education, communication technique optimisation, shared decision-making, care upgrade or, ultimately, exclusion of health professionals)....
Source: BMJ Quality and Safety - Category: Journals (General) Authors: Tags: Electronic pages Source Type: research