This guidebook provides tools to establish an effective patient grievance program for ambulatory surgical centers, home health agencies, hospice providers, hospitals, and long term care facilities. Tools include policy and procedure checklists, healthcare investigation protocols, resolution strategies, service recovery considerations, and database recommendations.

Using a clear, straightforward approach, this book provides a patient-oriented approach to complaint handling that can be used by all staff in an office, clinic, or system. Readers will learn how to develop a system for documenting patient complaints and comments, As well as strategies for monitoring and analyzing the information documented by patient claims. Other tools include a mechanism for changing behaviors of health care providers and improving delivery systems, strategies for dealing with difficult and abusive patients, and sample scripted transcripts for dealing with the most common types of complaints heard by health care practitioners. With a solid service recovery system in place, health care organizations and practices can meet accreditation agency standards for grievance processes, and, As a result, greatly reduce risk management claims. Resolving Patient Complaints: A Step-by-Step Guide to Effective Service Recovery provides managers, physicians, and employees with the skills and tools necessary to implement a service recovery process to respond to and review patient complaints and concerns about quality of care. Author Liz Osborne draws on her 15 years of experience as manager of a patient relations department in a large HMO to give expert advice on addressing patient dissatisfaction appropriately and effectively.

Step-by-step guide to resolving conflict and creating a CMS-compliant patient grievance process.

Getting the right diagnosis is a key aspect of health care - it provides an explanation of a patient's health problem and informs subsequent health care decisions. The diagnostic process is a complex, collaborative activity that involves clinical reasoning and information gathering to determine a patient's health problem. According to Improving Diagnosis in Health Care, diagnostic errors-inaccurate or delayed diagnoses-persist throughout all settings of care and continue to harm an unacceptable number of patients. It is likely that most people will experience at least one diagnostic error in their lifetime, sometimes with devastating consequences. Diagnostic errors may cause harm to patients by preventing or delaying appropriate treatment, providing unnecessary or harmful treatment, or resulting in psychological or financial repercussions. The committee concluded that improving the diagnostic process is not only possible, but also represents a moral, professional, and public health imperative. Improving Diagnosis in Health Care, a continuation of the landmark Institute of Medicine reports To Err Is Human (2000) and Crossing the Quality Chasm (2001), finds that diagnosis-and, in particular, the occurrence of diagnostic errorsâ€"has been largely unappreciated in efforts to improve the quality and safety of health care. Without a dedicated focus on improving diagnosis, diagnostic errors will likely worsen as the delivery of health care and the diagnostic process continue to increase in complexity. Just as the diagnostic process is a collaborative activity, improving diagnosis will require collaboration and a widespread commitment to change among health care professionals, health care organizations, patients and their families, researchers, and policy makers. The recommendations of Improving Diagnosis in Health Care contribute to the growing momentum for change in this crucial area of health care quality and safety.

The authors of this book set out a system of safety strategies and interventions for managing patient safety on a day-to-day basis and improving safety over the long term. These strategies are applicable at all levels of the healthcare system from the frontline to the regulation and governance of the system. There have been many advances in patient safety, but we now need a new and broader vision that encompasses care throughout the patient’s journey. The authors argue that we need to see safety through the patient’s eyes, to consider how safety is managed in different contexts and to develop a wider strategic and practical vision in which patient safety is recast as the management of risk over time. Most safety improvement strategies aim to improve reliability and move closer toward optimal care. However, healthcare will always be under pressure and we also require ways of managing safety when conditions are difficult. We need to make more use of strategies concerned with detecting, controlling, managing and responding to risk. Strategies for managing safety in highly standardised and controlled environments are necessarily different from those in which clinicians constantly have to adapt and respond to changing circumstances. This work is supported by the Health Foundation. The Health Foundation is an independent charity committed to bringing about better health and health care for people in the UK. The charity’s aim is a healthier population in the UK, supported by high quality health care that can be equitably accessed. The Foundation carries out policy analysis and makes grants to front-line teams to try ideas in practice and supports research into what works to make people’s lives healthier and improve the health care system, with a particular emphasis on how to make successful change happen. A key part of the work is to make links between the knowledge of those working to deliver health and health care with research evidence and analysis. The aspiration is to create a virtuous circle, using what works on the ground to inform effective policymaking and vice versa. Good health and health care are vital for a flourishing society. Through sharing what is known, collaboration and building people’s skills and knowledge, the Foundation aims to make a difference and contribute to a healthier population.

This User’s Guide is intended to support the design, implementation, analysis, interpretation, and quality evaluation of registries created to increase understanding of patient outcomes. For the purposes of this guide, a patient registry is an organized system that uses observational study methods to collect uniform data (clinical and other) to evaluate specified outcomes for a population defined by a particular disease, condition, or exposure, and that serves one or more predetermined scientific, clinical, or policy purposes. A registry database is a file (or files) derived from the registry. Although registries can serve many purposes, this guide focuses on registries created for one or more of the following purposes: to describe the natural history of disease, to determine clinical effectiveness or cost-effectiveness of health care products and services, to measure or monitor safety and harm, and/or to measure quality of care. Registries are classified according to how their populations are defined. For example, product registries include patients who have been exposed to biopharmaceutical products or medical devices. Health services registries consist of patients who have had a common procedure, clinical encounter, or hospitalization. Disease or condition registries are defined by patients having the same diagnosis, such as cystic fibrosis or heart failure. The User’s Guide was created by researchers affiliated with AHRQ’s Effective Health Care Program, particularly those who participated in AHRQ’s DEcIDE (Developing Evidence to Inform Decisions About Effectiveness) program. Chapters were subject to multiple internal and external independent reviews.

Section 1557 is the nondiscrimination provision of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). This brief guide explains Section 1557 in more detail and what your practice needs to do to meet the requirements of this federal law. Includes sample notices of nondiscrimination, as well as taglines translated for the top 15 languages by state.