Time needed to resolve patient complaints and factors influencing it: a cohort study.

Objective: There has been an increase in the number and complexity of patient complaints against healthcare institutions. An understanding of the resources needed in this area is important for proper planning.

Design: Cohort study.

Setting: A 1250-bed tertiary-care teaching hospital.

Participants: All patient complaints received between 1 February 2014 and 31 January 2015 were prospectively included in this cohort study.

Main Outcome Measures: The amount of time spent on the investigation and liaising with the complainant for each case was recorded. The complainant's personal details and characteristics were recorded anonymously.

Results: In total, 908 patient complaints were recorded from 801 individuals during the study period. Longer median person-hours were spent on managing complaints that were brought forward by men (1.48 h), those who were distant relatives of the patients (2.08 h), foreigners (1.58 h) and non-subsidised patients (1.83 h). Patient complaints falling into the categories of clinical domain (3.00 h) and patient rights (2.54 h), quality (3.00 h) and safety (2.83 h) required the longest median time to manage. Multiple logistic regression analysis revealed that the total amount of time spent on the complaints was predicted by the gender of the complainant, the relationship of the complainant with the patient, the subsidy status of the patient, the severity and the domain of the complaint.

Conclusions: This study reported the time required to manage patient complaints in a larger tertiary-care academic medical centre. Predictors of the time spent on resolving patient complaints can be used as parameters for resource planning.