Ombudsman report: Doctors and consultants rarely "engage wholeheartedly" with patients' complaints, the Ombudsman, Emily O'Reilly, has found. She has also expressed concern about the culture of handling complaints in hospitals.
She said how complaints were handled was dependant on the goodwill and co-operation of medical staff. "With certain exceptions, the Ombudsman has rarely found that health professionals, particularly doctors and consultants, engage wholeheartedly with patients' complaints," she said in a new report on her experiences of dealing with complaints in the public health sector.
This combined with patients' reluctance to complain makes for a "very unsatisfactory situation", she said.
Complaint handling, according to Ms O'Reilly, is invariably seen by medical staff as a matter for administrators and she has called for the role of the consultant medical staff to be incorporated into the complaints procedure.
It was essential that medical staff "view the handling of complaints and patient safety as an integral part of clinical governance and risk management", she said.
Citing a survey of patients carried out by the Irish Society for Quality and Safety in Healthcare last year, which found that 75 per cent of those surveyed were unaware of a complaints procedure and 40 per cent of those who did complain were dissatisfied, Ms O'Reilly said there was much for the Health Service Executive (HSE) to consider.
Complaints provided an opportunity to put things right for the patient, clients and their families and also had an equally important role to play in monitoring the quality of health services, she said.
People who make complaints are usually not motivated by prejudice or malice and are not generally seeking financial compensation, according to the Ombudsman. They were looking for a sincere apology or explanation and an assurance that the matter giving rise to the complaint would not recur, she said.
For the HSE to embrace a client-centred approach it is "vital" that complaints are resolved locally. This was an area that required "urgent attention" by the HSE going on the experience of the Ombudsman throughout 2005, she said.
In the report, the Ombudsman has also set out a new statement of good practice for the public health sector in dealing with patients. The statement is intended to assist the health services in becoming more patient focused. The Ombudsman plans to use it in her examination of all complaints relating to public healthcare. She said she wanted this statement to become a "living reality" for all patients.
This patient-centred approach is necessary not only in the light of ongoing difficulties in the health services, but also in view of the Health Act 2004 which, for the first time, provides for the establishment of a statutory procedure for handling complaints relating to health, according to Ms O'Reilly.
Regulations to be made under that Act by the Minister for Health will give members of the public the right to complain about services delivered by a much wider range of health service providers. These regulations have yet to be published.
In future, the public will also be able to complain to the Ombudsman about not only the HSE but also agencies providing services on its behalf.
For the first time Dublin's major public voluntary hospitals, including Beaumont, St James's, St Vincent's, as well as other similar hospitals in the rest of the State, such as Victoria University Hospital, Cork and St John's Hospital, Limerick will now be in the Ombudsman's remit.
The report is part of an initiative the Ombudsman has launched aimed at giving constructive feedback to public bodies operating in different sectors of her remit.
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