Gisborne Hospital Report - Health and Disability Commissioner

Gisborne Hospital 1999 – 2000
Incident Reporting and Complaints Procedure
“Sometimes the Quality Co-ordinator responds to the complaint and
sometimes a senior manager or other person who is dealing with the
complaint responds to the complaint. Medical staff seldom respond, but
sometimes write reports on complaints that involve them.”
5.10 Consumers have the option of taking their complaints to the hospital, the
Health Consumer Trust Advocate or the Health and Disability Services
Consumer Advocate. The Chair of the CQG, in his capacity as Maori Health
Manager, advised the investigation team that if people discuss their concerns
with him and then wish to make a complaint, he assists them with their
complaint by filling out an incident form and passing it to the Quality Coordinator.
If they are not satisfied with the outcome of the complaint he
advises them to come back to him, and he will then follow up where possible.
If thereafter further follow-up is required, he will assist complainants by
referring the matter on to the independent Health and Disability Services
Consumer Advocate.
5.11 People working within THL appeared to have very different impressions of
how the complaints system operated depending on their place in the
organisation. The former Group Manager (Hospital) (Ms Rachel Haggerty)
described there being “quite structured processes around reviewing
complaints, including reviewing clinical records, identifying process changes
that need to be made and following up on those. They had a reasonably good
level of closure with consumers. I would meet personally with the patients
and their whanau. Very few people would just get a letter .…” However, this
view was not shared by others.
Complaints review procedures
5.12 The 1998 Stage One Internal Clinical Audit noted in the section on
complaints/systematic learning that, while there was learning from individual
complaints, it was unclear whether there was “systematic learning from a
regular analysis of the overall frequency and nature of the complaints”. The
Group Manager (Hospital) noted in response: “there is regular analysis with
review of complaint[s]. Trends are looked at but there is at present no link to
QA mechanisms.”
5.13 The Stage Two Internal Clinical Audit conducted in August 1999 noted that a
PC-based computerised database “has been operating for 2 weeks. Data will
be analysed and action taken via Clinical Board and/or Executive
Management.” There was no evidence of any discussion of complaints in the
Clinical Board or Senior Management Group minutes provided to the
Commissioner’s investigation team.
5.14 A monthly report on complaints is made to the CQG, with a quarterly
summary to the Audit Committee. This report includes a summary of
complaints reported and reviews of those complaints. There was no evidence
from the CQG minutes supplied to the investigation team of any discussion on
the monthly complaints report. There is no evidence that the Board of
Directors receives a regular summary of the complaints being handled by
Tairawhiti Healthcare.
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