Complaints Homepage
How to file a complaint about your healthcare
Halfway down the page are links to information that will help
you file a complaint. If you want to help other patients too, and wanted to
tackle a cause to that end, a good one to take up would be bringing the public's and the
government's attention to the fact that there is no reasonable complaint process to which
patients can turn. Certainly not through agencies like state medical boards.
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 in ways that stymie and placate patients rather than that get to the
bottom of problems. However, we still hope you will complain.
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
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.
But we should. If enough complaints
pile up about a specific practitioner, maybe someday someone will be helped by it.
However, 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.
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
(although you can be
blacklisted)
Complaints
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