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Full Table of Contents
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Abbreviated
Table of Contents
Home Page
Patient Safety
Silence vs
Safety
Silenced
White wall
of Silence
Silencing
Conflict Of
Interest
Psychology of
Providers
Subjectivity
Blacklisting
Nurse survey
Loyalty
Mobbing and
bullying
Trust Us
Defensive
documenting
Report Rate
Risk
managemnt
SOAP
Management
Hospitals
Crime in
medicine
Sexual Abuse
Liability
Limitations
Free Speech
for Patients
Exploitation
OSMB Medical
Boards
Mammography
solutions
Medical errors
Medical
Complaints
One number
Links
Injured patients who want to help and be heard,
click here.
Thomas Jefferson said that given the choice between
government without newspapers and newspapers without government, he would choose
to have newspapers.
In medicine we have government without newspapers. Patients
cannot find out what they need to know to make informed choices. No one in
medicine records or reports the information patients need to know the most. So
patients will have to.
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Complaints Homepage
We hope that you file a complaint about your problem.
However, be aware of the realities of complaining about medicine.
First of all, there is no central database for complaints
about medicine. The federal government has database for complaints about unsafe
products. But there is no such thing for unsafe health care. For other products,
the Consumer Product Safety Commission will go online in March of 2011 with a
database in which you can file complaints about products that you buy. But there
is no such thing for complaints about health care. In health care, the blood
bank is managed by Dracula. Physicians with loyalties to each other are the only
people to whom you can complain, and chiefly what they do is protect each other
(see OSMB for starters).
We hope you do file a complaint, but as 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."
A medical malpractice lawyer in Pennsylvania told us, "I’ve
tried myself to go to state licensing boards. They are lazy, powerless, and have
absolutely no incentive to police their own brothers or expose them when they’re
all in it together. Justice doesn’t matter—only winning."
Rights without remedies are hollow.
- Alan Dershowitz, Harvard Law
Professor
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 patients and that have complaint processes that are
designed to placate, if not stymie, patients rather than that get to the
bottom of problems.
We still hope you will complain, even though most patients with legitimate complaints don't,
in part because of how the process has been set up to discourage them.
For example, the difficulty of learning how and to whom
to complain. And the unfriendly nature of the process. Even I didn't complain. I
discovered that my dentist was doing unnecessary work (the dental hygienist
warned me, a second opinion from another dentist confirmed it) and even I didn't
file a complaint because of how intimidating and obscure the process is, coupled
with how apparent it becomes that the process is not on your side.
But we should. If enough complaints
pile up about a specific practitioner, maybe someday someone will be helped by it.
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 almost always is 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 the public's and the government's
attention that there is no reasonable complaint process to which patients can
turn. State medical boards are lobbyists for doctors, not protectors of
patients.
In the meantime, here is information about how to file your
complaint with those people.
How to file a complaint about your healthcare
List of state medical boards to whom to
complain
Medical complaint form
In addition to complaining to the state medical board, complain to
the facility in which it happened (sometimes they refuse to let you complain,
other times they send the complaint straight to the people about whom you
complained - read elsewhere on this site about what results from that). If you intend only to jot a note expressing
your concerns, the links above are 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
(although you can be
blacklisted
and even injured.)
Complaints
Instructions | Complaints Form |
Release |
State Boards
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