You made a reservation at the restaurant for 7 but still haven’t been seated by 7:45. What do you? Complain to the manager, of course. But the instinct to express your dissatisfaction can be mysteriously muted when you’re unhappy with a doctor. We invest our docs with so much power that it feels awkward or downright impossible to tell them when we think they’ve treated us badly or provided inadequate care. And, because our health or our very lives may depend on them, we don’t want to anger them.
But doctors and sometimes their superiors need to know. Many problems are merely a matter of communication and can be resolved directly with the doctor or a patient advocate. But if the issue is serious, higher officials need to know.
You don’t necessarily need to talk to lawyers, but bad doctoring shouldn’t be ignored. “It’s important for consumer protection,” said Dr. Tariq Butt, a family-practice physician who is a member of the Illinois Medical Disciplinary Board, which serves as an advisory board to the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation.
Here are two actual situations in which patients were upset about their care. We asked two experts the most effective way to complain. Our experts are Dr. James Hill, vice chief of staff for Northwestern Memorial Hospital and an orthopedic surgeon; and Erma Clark, a registered nurse and manager of Northwestern Memorial’s patient-representative department.
Example 1
A woman’s elderly mother took the wrong dosage of her anti-depressant and anti-anxiety medicines and became disoriented. When the daughter took her mother to the doctor and tried to discuss the medication problem, the doctor dismissively said, “I’ll be the doctor, you be the daughter.” The daughter was furious at what she considered the doctor’s shoddy care and rude treatment.
Dr. James Hill: “The daughter can write the doctor a letter discussing her dissatisfaction. He might have given her a glib answer because he didn’t feel he had the legal right to discuss the mother’s medical condition. I respect the patients that have enough gumption to tell me what they’re upset about. What works for me is, if they feel comfortable, to write me a letter. I can read the letter and digest it. I can call them when I have enough time and we can discuss it. We’ll both know what the issues are and we’ll hear each other.”
Erma Clark: “Not everybody is comfortable addressing the physician. There is still a population of patients who feel intimated by physicians but want to be heard. They don’t feel as if they can challenge the doctor or ask a question that may upset them. There are many avenues a patient can lodge a complaint. Write or call the patient representative or advocate department or the chief of staff [if a hospital is involved]. In a private practice, write to the office manager. Put your perception of the communication in writing. If it comes to us, we work directly with that physician. We may speak up on behalf of the daughter and say she perceived the conversation in a negative manner. We help facilitate the communication between the patient and the physician.”
Example 2
Over a period of several months, a 45-year-old woman visited her internist, complaining of being extremely tired, a swollen stomach, constipation and twinges around her ovaries. Her doctor diagnosed perimenopause, gas or irritable-bowel syndrome and sent her to a gastroenterologist who found nothing amiss. The symptoms worsened, and the woman asked her internist whether she could have ovarian cancer.
“I wouldn’t worry about it,” the doctor said. But the woman pressed for tests. The results showed that she had advanced ovarian cancer. She had all the classic symptoms, and her doctor had been oblivious.
Hill: “That gets into the sphere of clinical competence. You should write a letter to the chief of staff’s office. That would trigger a whole quality assessment on that physician. It would be reviewed by a committee of his peers [at the hospital] to see if he acted in a normal, appropriate manner. If not, then he’s reprimanded and it goes into his record. If it’s a consistent problem, it affects his credentials and hospital privileges, whether he’s on staff or not, whether he can admit patients and operate. But the hospital can’t take anybody’s license away, and we can’t control what happens in somebody’s private office. If a person feels this is egregious enough and that a physician’s competency should be reviewed, you can go to the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation, the official body that controls the licensing.” PATIENT/DOCTOR RELATIONSHIP
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Taking action
If it’s a communication issue (you think your doctor was rude or you felt rushed at an appointment, for example), write a letter detailing why you were upset to your doctor and/or the patient-advocate department of the hospital or clinic. Other options are writing to the chief of staff, medical director or — in a private practice — the office manager.
If it’s an issue involving quality of care or ethics, send a detailed letter about what happened to the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation, 100 W. Randolph St., 9th floor, Chicago, IL 60601. Write “Professional Regulation Complaint Intake” on the envelope.
Or file a complaint online at idfpr.com. Click on the Professional Regulation link on the left. Scroll down to “File a complaint by Email.” (The Professional Regulation page also has a link to see if your doctor has ever been disciplined.)
Ultimately, if a doctor is found in violation of the Medical Practice Act, then the agency can “discipline the doctor’s license,” said department spokeswoman Susan Hofer. This can result in a reprimand, probation, suspension, revocation of the license or a fine.
— M.P.
