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Patients’ complaints as a management tool for continuous quality improvement

Rachel Javetz (Hadassah‐Hebrew University Medical Center, Jerusalem, Israel)
Zvi Stern (Hadassah‐Hebrew University Medical Center, Jerusalem, Israel)

Journal of Management in Medicine

ISSN: 0268-9235

Article publication date: 1 June 1996

1668

Abstract

Continuous quality improvement focuses on the customer and, therefore, requires attention to customers’ feedback as a vital input. Customers’ feedback in general hospitals includes utilization statistics of various services, patient satisfaction surveys and patients’ complaints. The role of complaint data as a management tool, and particularly as applied to quality improvement, has received little attention in the literature. As a quality control tool, complaints are investigated on the individual, unit and organizational levels. Repeated complaints about the same units, procedures or individuals, are especially important for quality review. The role of the hospital administration is to draw on the human, technological and procedural resources at its disposal, along a solution time interval (immediate, short and long term), in designing its policy for quality improvement. Presents three examples of policy changes. The aggregate of complaint data serves, in addition, for follow‐up of the effect of changes introduced by policy decisions.

Keywords

Citation

Javetz, R. and Stern, Z. (1996), "Patients’ complaints as a management tool for continuous quality improvement", Journal of Management in Medicine, Vol. 10 No. 3, pp. 39-48. https://doi.org/10.1108/02689239610122306

Publisher

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MCB UP Ltd

Copyright © 1996, MCB UP Limited

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