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| One NumberThe chief purpose of complaints in medicine is to protect other patients. What if you smell alcohol on your surgeon's breath? There should be a phone number for that well known enough to roll off the tongues of healthcare workers and patients. If you don't complain the next patient could get hurt. Since healthcare professionals almost never report problems or abuses, it is especially important for patients to do it for each other. There is more than one reason for why we don't hear from the victims of crimes in medicine or their loved ones. One of the reasons is that there is no one to tell. State medical boards are of little use in this regard (see OSMB). Too often it is not even their jurisdiction. Need to report that your hospital is violating laws governing your care? Even with persistence and research, you will not find anyone to help you with that. In medicine, enforcing laws and regulations often is no one's job. Has anyone ever been disciplined for violating federal mandatory reporting laws? Complaints filed by patients do not result in discipline.Most errors, abuses and crimes go unreported and uncounted. No one learns from them. Nothing improves. How many lives could be saved, how many abuses prevented, if we knew about them. Who do you call if the problem is with a pharmacist? Or a nurse? Or an anesthesiologist? Or a dentist? Usually there is an appropriate board to contact somewhere. How likely are you to persist in trying to figure it out when you are bleeding and in pain and you get a phone matrix and then a machine, and then a day later when someone finally returns your call, they are of no help. When you smell alcohol on your surgeon's breath, or when you've just had your life ruined by a lecher with a medical degree, you need help now. Three days of searching to find a board that has a form for you to fill out is too little too late. And the complaint is being made to an organization that works for the interests of its members, not patients. This leave patients with no recourse other than to call lawyers. But unless you have a big-money, easy-win case, you are not going to get a lawyer. Only 3% of legitimate grievances get lawyers. That's LEGITIMATE, not frivolous, grievances. The vast majority give up without even trying. They want help, not a court battle. So we never hear from them. We need to hear from them. Someone has to record what the problems are in medicine so that we can learn from them. Even the messages in fortune cookies know that. I got one that said, "Without memory there is no improvement." But to escape liability, medicine is disinterested in those memories even though the lives of future patients depend on them. There needs to be a phone number, one phone number for all complaints about healthcare. One single phone number answered by people who can explain which agency, which department, which person, and whatever else you need to know to respond to what has been done to you, or who can at least tell you when there is no appropriate number to call. For amusement, if you want to hear what happens when you call the Ohio State Medical Board to complain, click phone matrix. As it plays, consider that it was a person who had been through that matrix enough times, and made enough mistakes in previous attempts, to know exactly which buttons to push. What percentage of senior citizens could do the same? Even when you do get to the end of it, you don't get help. It is not a legitimate complaint process. There isn't one. We need one. |
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