Complaint or grievance, you better have a policy
Complaint or grievance, you better have a policy
Tips on building a committee, education
Another committee? This doesn't have to be a frustrating item on your to-do list. If you don't have already have a committee to deal with grievances or complaints, build from what you already have in place to do it, suggests Sue Dill Calloway, RN, Esq., BSN, MSN, JD, director of hospital patient safety at The Doctors Co. in Columbus, OH.
Owning the process
Both CMS and The Joint Commission require committees, and both give sole responsibility of owning the process to the hospital's governing body, which can delegate responsibilities to a special committee. CMS refers to a grievance committee and The Joint Commission calls this a complaint resolution committee. Whatever it's called, Calloway has some suggestions on who needs to be at that table.
There's not much in the way of requiring certain people be a part of your committee, but Calloway recommends it be multidisciplinary. Generally, she says, your risk manager should be included. Patient safety "probably" should be, as well as your privacy/security officer. She says the consumer ombudsman usually runs it, and if you have internal legal counsel, she suggests including them as well.
She also suggests including the patient satisfaction personnel or the staff who are responsible for reviewing patient satisfaction surveys since those may contain complaints or grievances that must go through the process.
If you're thinking, "'Oh man, another committee,'" she suggests looking at "what committee do we have right now that meets that everybody who we need is probably going to be there so that when we're done, we can just reconvene and have the people stay over?" In one hospital she worked for, the performance improvement committees was big and almost everybody was required to sit in.
So when that meeting ended, grievance committee members were simply asked to stick around for a short meeting. Because there is not much guidance on how the committee should build its agenda, she says her committee, in looking at revising its policy, would look especially for system-related issues.
"We drafted a policy that really specified what the committee was going to do and how important it was. And you need to put that in your patient safety plan. You should have a patient safety plan and a PI plan because you need to know how that correlates with your plan," she says.
Patient education
Calloway says you need to put information on your grievance policy in your patient rights. She says when surveyors go through the hospital and ask patients if they've been informed about the complaint process, most of them answer no. She suggests auditing this but first making sure you're delivering the information the right way to patients.
"When you're the registration person, you shouldn't just hand a patient something and say, 'Here. Sign this for consent for treatment,'" she says. "You need to say, 'Mrs. Jones, I need you to sign this document and let me tell you what you're signing. This is for consent for treatment. It also says in this document that if you ever have any complaints or concerns,' (and you don't have to use the word grievances) 'there's the name and address of someone to talk to.'" Don't just hand a patient a form and ask for a signature. Reiterate what is in the form he or she is signing, she says.
Who should take the call?
The person to whom complaints should be addressed can be anyone. Calloway says some hospitals call that role a complaint specialist, which she says is a bit unnecessary. "We have a specialist. We have consumer advocates. That's what they do. That's what their recognized job is."
Another committee? This doesn't have to be a frustrating item on your to-do list.Subscribe Now for Access
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