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Onvrede over klachtenbehandelingen in het kader van de Wet Klachtrecht Cliënten Zorgsector.

Sluijs, E.M., Friele, R.D. Onvrede over klachtenbehandelingen in het kader van de Wet Klachtrecht Cliënten Zorgsector. TSG: Tijdschrift voor Gezondheidswetenschappen: 2003, 81(6), 318-326
Two thirds of the clients who had made a complaint against the hospital were dissatisfied with the way in which the complaint was dealt with. The complaints were handled by complaint committees with an independent chair and according to written regulations. All health care providers in the Netherlands are obliged to install such complaint committees since the Clients Rights of Complaint Act was issued in 1996. The committees are to judge the complaint as founded or unfounded. In this article we investigated the factors related to clients dissatisfaction with the complaint handling. The method is secondary analysis. The data consist of 110 questionnaires completed by clients in 1999 when the Complaint Act was evaluated. The results show that clients' dissatisfaction was related to the complaint committee as well as to the hospital. In the clients' view the committee had not tried for an acceptable solution for the problem, the committee was biased and the committee had judged the complaint as unfounded. Besides, the hospital had not responded with correcting or preventive measures, according to the clients. Relatively many clients whose complaints were judged as founded remained dissatisfied. The reasons are as yet unknown. New research has been started to investigate causes of clients' dissatisfaction.