Complaints Homepage
How to file a complaint about your healthcare
In medicine, there really are no places to which patients can
go with grievances. The healthcare industry has all the power. Only once in a
great while does a patient have a big-money, easy-win case that attracts a
lawyer. The rest of the time, patients are dispensed with quite easily by the
healthcare industry. The best a patient can do is file complaints with agencies
that do not represent them and have complaint processes merely to placate
patients.
The
American Iatrogenic Association says, "Keep in mind that state medical
boards are generally comprised of physicians. As with all such agencies that
regulate occupations, members of these boards feel a personal and professional
kinship with those who they regulate. In other words, doctors do not regulate
doctors effectively. Claims to the contrary notwithstanding, a state medical
board does not operate in your interest."
But please file your complaint anyway. If enough complaints
pile up about a specific physician, maybe someday someone will be helped by it.
Rights without remedies are hollow.
- Alan Dershowitz
Most patients with legitimate complaints don't complain.
One of the reasons is the difficulty of learning how and to whom
to complain. Another is how unfriendly the process is. Even I didn't complain. I
figured out my dentist was doing unnecessary work (the dental hygienist warned
me, a second opinion from another dentist confirmed it) and even I didn't
complain. Just in trying to figure out how and to whom to complain one can smell
a rat. Nothing about it feels as though there can be an upside to it. And, in
fact, that is almost always the case. If your own misadventure in medicine
impels you to try to do something to protect other patients, a good cause to
take up would be trying to bring to this fact to the public's and the
government's attention and/or trying to establish a legitimate complaint
process.
In the meantime, here is information about how to file your
complaint.
List of state medical boards to whom to
complain
Medical complaint form
In addition to complaining to the state board, complain to
the facility in which it happened. If you intend only to jot a note expressing
your concerns, the above is all you need. If you want to do more than that (and
you need to if you don't want it to be dismissed by the first person who reads
it),
what's below may be of help.
Instructions
for writing complaints
Release of Medical
Information, a legal form
Person to
email with questions
In some cases you might want to complain to your insurance
company as well. They have complaint departments and investigators. Also, many
cities have a local guild to which area doctors belong. Such guilds chiefly
serve other purposes, but can receive complaints. Although, like state medical
boards, they lobby for doctors not patients. Your a sheep complaining to a
community of wolves about one of their wolves.
Still, you should complain. It is rare for medical personnel
to report problems, so patients
have to.
Fees, attitude, rudeness, long waits in reception areas and
such like are not matters for complaints to state boards or agencies. They won't
even read complaints about those subjects. Which is another reason there should
be an agency representing patients. If nothing else, such an agency could
explain to patients how to respond to such problems without complaining.
You cannot be sued for filing a complaint
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