November 2003

Complaints management turns wrong into right

A Department of Human Services Complaints Management and Quality Improvement in Health Care Services forum attracted 95 people from across the public health services sector.

Forum participants also included representatives of the Department, Medical Defence Association, Equal Opportunity Commission, Office of Health Information Technology, Primary Care Partnership Care Advisory Group, Health Review Council, Women’s Health Victoria, divisions of General Practice and public and private hospitals.

The forum was organised by the Department’s Clinical Governance and Complaints and Whistleblower Units.

Anniversary Professor of Law and Society at the University of London Linda Mulcahy was the keynote speaker.

Professor Mulcahy is a world-leading author on complaints management and quality improvement in health care services.

She has worked with the U.K. National Health Service on policy development regarding complaints management, quality improvement and medico-legal issues.

Professor Mulcahy’s visit was sponsored by the Australian Council for Safety and Quality in Health Care and the New South Wales Health Care Complaints Commission (HCCC).

Her forum presentation was followed by the Turning Wrongs into Rights Project Manager, Amanda Cornwall. This project is developing ‘best-practice guidelines’ for complaints-handling in health services and is sponsored by the Australian Council for Safety and Quality in Health Care.

Professor Mulcahy discussed the role of complaints in quality management—barriers to complaining and what complaints reveal—and the U.K. experience.

In light of several crises—the Bristol inquiry into heart surgery services, the conviction of a doctor for murdering 15 of his patients and inquiries into the systematic abuse of patients, by four doctors, that went undetected for 20 years—the British Government has instigated unprecedented change in culture and the practice of complaints and adverse events management.

Professor Mulcahy’s address included examples of better practice complaints management such as the requirement for a complaints sponsor on every Hospital Trust Board in the U.K. to ensure that complaints data is critically examined at a senior level and that the the link is made to the quality improvement systems in the organisation.