How to Complain About Healthcare Organizations?
There’s nothing more important than your health. Which means when you are on the receiving end of malpractice, staff misconduct or negligence from a healthcare organization you’ll rightly feel aggrieved and upset.
Whether you’ve been given the wrong treatment or you’ve had a condition made worse by a series of poor decisions made by those looking after you, you’ll likely want to file a complaint. So how can you go about doing so?
How to Write a Complaint About a Healthcare Organization?
- Usually the best practice with complaints is to approach people within the organization to explain the issues you’ve been having. However, since the healthcare professionals you’re having contact with may be causing the issues, you may have to resort straight to the complaints procedure in order to raise concerns to a hospital’s or another healthcare organization’s management team.
- Note down everything that has happened during the incidents that have given you cause for complaint. Provide evidence such as medical charts and prescription documentation.
- Once you’ve collated all of the information, it’s time to write up the complaint, stating clearly the issues you’ve had. Remain professional and stick to the factual information. Avoid making assertions you cannot prove.
- Make sure to conclude your written complaint with a range of contact details so that the healthcare organization in question can easily contact you to advise of any action they are taking with regards to your case.
When Can You Complain About a Healthcare Organization?
Due to the nature of the industry, the stakes are usually higher when complaining about a healthcare organization. It could be that you were misdiagnosed, had an operation that went wrong, or you were prescribed medication that worsened your symptoms.
When it comes to your health, in truth there aren’t many instances where you’ve been wronged and you don’t have grounds to complain. However, listed below are some of the most common reasons for complaints:
- Misdiagnoses that had serious consequences
- Wrongly-prescribed medication
- Botched operations (both medical and cosmetic)
- Dangerous sanitary practices
- Food poisoning from poor catering
- Incorrect billing (overcharged for services rendered)
- Negligent care
Why File a Complaint?
More so than in other industries, a complaint made to a healthcare organization is likely to be just the first step towards more serious action such as legal proceedings. In a great deal of cases, complaints will escalate into legal battle with a healthcare organization’s insurance company. For this reason, you may not receive an apology as that could be construed as an emission of guilt.
However, for smaller complaints, it’s still worthwhile making the company aware of your experience. It could be that your complaint leads to the disciplining of a staff member with previous instances of misconduct, or changing suppliers (such as a catering company within a hospital). Either way, your complaint can help to ensure that whatever happened to you, doesn’t happen to anybody else.
Possible Outcomes for a Complaint?
The range of complaints possible with a healthcare organization make it difficult to pin down an exact result of your complaint. Many of the cases for complaint will progress to the court system to seek a damages settlement. Whereas others will immediately offer a compensatory amount to close off the complaint there and then.
In the case of minor complaints, organizations such as hospitals may inform you of the action they are taking such as implementing new procedures or retraining staff, which are common outcomes of minor complaints to healthcare companies.
Where Can You File a Complaint Against a Healthcare Organization?
The integrity of your health has no limit in value. Therefore, if you have been the subject of a mistake or negligent care, you have every right to launch an official complaint. However, sometimes an initial complaint can fall on deaf ears. This is where we can help you.
By filing a complaint on our website, we can massively increase the exposure your complaint receives by posting it in front of our thousands of users, in search engines and on social media. We then contact the company directly by email or social media to instigate an effective resolution to your poor experience.
Therefore, if you’ve got a legitimate complaint against a healthcare organization don’t wait to them to ignore your case, use the button below to report it to our site and have it resolved to your satisfaction!
