Playbook, medical practice
Two complaints at a practice wearing the same words
The largest single complaint a surgery receives is about not being able to get through in the morning, and it is administrative from beginning to end. The other kind, that something was missed or that a clinician did not listen, is about care, and no sentence assembled from a document should go near it.
Why this is not the general answer
The handling pattern for complaints holds across every trade. What follows is the part that does not.
- Access is the complaint more often than anything clinical: the morning queue, the engaged tone, the online route closing once the day's capacity is gone. All of that can be described without commenting on anybody's care.
- Practices are expected to run a written complaints procedure with named stages, and there is normally a route above the practice, so a patient shown both usually gives the practice stage a fair run first.
- A complaint brought on behalf of a relative needs that relative's consent before anyone can look at anything, so the boundary arrives before the substance rather than after it.
- The person complaining is almost always still registered here and will be back next month, which makes this a step in a continuing relationship rather than a closing message to a departing customer.
How it arrives
- i can never get through on the phone
- i want to complain about a doctor
- the online form was closed by five past eight
- how do i complain about the surgery
- no one called me back like they said
- can i complain on behalf of my mother
What has to be indexed for this to work
| The written complaints procedure, with its stages | Who receives a complaint, how quickly it is acknowledged, how long a response takes and who signs it. Publish the version you would hand to somebody who asked for it at the desk. |
|---|---|
| The route above the practice | Where a complaint goes once the practice stage is finished, in your own wording. Patients are generally entitled to know it exists, and hiding it makes the practice stage look like the whole of the process. |
| Consent when somebody complains for another person | What you need before anything about a relative's care can be discussed, and the form if there is one. This stops a well meant reply becoming a disclosure. |
| How appointments are released, described honestly | What happens at the start of the day, what happens when capacity is gone, and whether anything is held back. It does not remove the complaint, it removes the feeling that nobody will explain the system. |
The reply
I am sorry, and I would rather this reached somebody than stopped with me. We have a written complaints procedure setting out who looks at a complaint and how long each stage takes, and you can ask for a copy [1]. If this is about how appointments are released in the morning, that process is described on our appointments page [2]. Anything about your care is reviewed by a clinician rather than by reception. Leave me your name, an email and what happened, and it goes to the practice manager.
It apologises for the experience and says nothing whatever about the care, which is the line that has to hold. Naming the procedure as a document the patient can hold makes it a process rather than a wall. The access half is answered where it honestly can be, because somebody who understands the morning system is complaining about a real thing rather than about being fobbed off.
Where it stops
The trigger. Every complaint, and immediately on any mention of a solicitor, a regulator, an ombudsman or harm.
This needs a person here rather than me. Leave your name, an email and what happened, and the practice manager will pick it up and tell you what happens next.
It stops answering before it guesses, says who will pick it up, and asks for the one thing that makes a reply possible. Nothing about it reads as a dead end.
Never say this here
Out of bounds
- Never comment on whether care was appropriate, whether something was missed, or whether a clinician was right.
- Never name a doctor, a nurse or a receptionist as the cause of anything.
- Never discuss a relative's care with the person complaining, however plausible the relationship sounds.
- Never discourage somebody from using the route above the practice, or suggest it will slow things down.
Questions
- Should it try to settle the small ones?
- No. It should recognise a complaint and route it, and nothing else. A cited quotation from the appointments page in reply to somebody describing being let down proves that nobody read the message.
- Can it confirm what happened at an appointment?
- No. It has no record access and cannot look anybody up. A confident sentence about an appointment it cannot see is the worst possible reply to a complaint, because it will be wrong in front of a witness.
- Is publishing how the morning system works risky?
- Less risky than leaving it unexplained. Most of the anger in this pair comes from people who believe there is a trick to it. A plain description of capacity and release converts a share of the complaints into acceptance.
Keep reading
- Everything for a medical practiceAdministrative questions a practice can safely automate, the symptom questions it must never touch, and how to word the refusal.
- Handling complaints in generalThe job is to route, not to resolve. Acknowledge without conceding, name the escalation route, and get it to a person fast.
- What actually happens when somebody joins the practiceNew patients ask about the boundary, the form, what proof you want and why the first check is with a healthcare assistant.
- Which things at a practice have a price at allDriver medicals, insurance forms and private letters carry a fee; the appointment does not. Publishing the work that sits outside.
- The insurer wants something from the practice, not the other way roundThe insurer asks the practice for a report with the patient's consent. What can be said about consent, who pays and who decides.
Try it on your own material
Upload a document or point it at your site, paste one line of HTML, then ask it something only your business could answer.