Despite the large number of complaints, companies often ignore complaint management and there is often insufficient management attention in this area. More than 70% of respondents are willing to adopt the redesigned complaint management workflow.
Problem statement
This fact highlights the importance of a good complaint management system that could help a hospital capture more patient complaints and use them to improve the quality of its services. Therefore, this research will enable the hospital to gather useful information about the gap in their existing complaint management system and use it to make better improvements, which will ultimately improve customer satisfaction, resulting in good word of mouth and a good public image.
Research objectives
All the dissatisfied patient comments in public can ruin the hospital's reputation and cause the company to lose its competitive advantages. The reason for this is that the hospital does not have good complaints management and therefore cannot register the correct number of complaints and reduce the number of complaints that are made public.
Scope
Definitions
LITERATURE REVIEW
- Consumer complaint behaviors
- Typology of complaint communication channels
- Fundamentals of customer satisfaction with complaint handling
- The Joint Commission standard for patient complaint capture and resolution process
- Service recovery
- Patient complain management system
- Conceptual framework
The basic concept of service recovery is for the service provider to take responsive actions to recover lost or dissatisfied customers and turn them back into satisfied customers (Singh and Wilkes 1996). In contrast, seven other studies, some by the same authors, demonstrate the service recovery paradox. This study adopted a 6-step model of the complaint management process to achieve effective service recovery (Bendall-Lydon and Powers, 2001).
METHODOLOGY
- Study site
- Study population
- Study design
- Instrumental development
- Data collection
- Data analysis
For example, nurse 1 is chosen because she has her own shift on the day of the study and is also available, as she is not taking care of the patient during the study. This study is a qualitative study conducted using a guided in-depth interview based on the 6-step model and workshops. On the day of the workshop, the same guided in-depth interview was also conducted with the other participants.
On the following day, another workshop was conducted with the same group of participants to redesign the complaint handling workflow based on literature review and their opinions and suggestions. After the second workshop, each of the participants was individually asked a set of questions (appendix 2) to assess their willingness to use a redesigned complaint management practice. Guided in-depth interview questions were structured based on the conceptual framework of 6 steps model in complaint management process to achieve effective service recovery (Bendall-Lydon and Powers 2001, Mattila and Wirtz 2004, . McCole 2004, Larivet and Brouard 2010).
The other interviews were conducted on the spot with the other participants. The redesigned workflow is based on the 6-step model of the complaint management process and suggestions from hospital staff.
RESULTS
In-depth interview
This in-depth interview allows us to identify the existing workflow gap of the complaint management system and also identify the current complaint handling workflow.
Encourage complaints as a quality improvement tool 1.1 How important is complaints in term of quality improvement tool?
D1 "Complaints are very important as they allow us to identify any mistakes, error spaces and areas that require improvement from the customer's perspective." D2 "Complaints are very important, my patients always complain that they have to wait a long time regardless of the appointment they made, so I think the hospital should improve this area." D4 "Complaints are important for service improvement, but I don't know how complaint management works."
Most respondents stated that they have used and are currently using patient complaints to improve hospital quality, such as waiting time. However, the minority of participants feel that they do not have a role in using the complaint to improve hospital quality. Some of the respondents expressed that there are many complaints and they do not know where to start and which problem should be dealt with first.
Establish a team of representative to handle complaints Most of the respondent stated that the hospital do not have specialized
When dealing with complaints, we monitor common complaints and inform our employees what to focus on. R1 "No, but as a manager, I am the one who collects patient complaints and reports to management in regular 3-monthly meetings." R3 “No, but we have a patient satisfaction form that we have collected and given to our boss”.
Resolve customer problem quickly and effectively
M1 “Not really, it depends on each case. We usually respond to the serious case first, such as one involving a lawsuit, but this does not happen often.” I think we should respond within 24 hours, but I'm not sure how long that takes under current practice.” No, we don't have a protocol on that yet, but we plan to have one.”
Not me personally, but I think our employees must have missed something, because we have a lot of patients every day." Yes, sometimes the documents recording the patient's complaint were lost, or if I was tied up in some task, I tend to forget . I was told to apologize to the customer and tell them to wait for the manager to contact them."
We listen to the customer's complaint, collect patient satisfaction and submit it to us.
Develop a complaint database
My secretary messaged me every three months, but I'm not sure how often it was updated.” N1 “I'm not sure what you mean by database, but I need to report all complaints received as an Excel file to the management team”. I have tried to report every day that the complaint has been filed, but sometimes we are too busy to do that.
N4 "There is no central database to put the data, but we do not receive the complaint and give it to them. R1 “Yes, we have the database, but each department keeps the data separately and presents it to the management team every three.
Commit to identifying failure point in the service system 5.1 Have you ever tried to identify failure point in the service system
M1 “I would say we did not analyze the point of failure all the time and not after all the complaints. Some of the information we receive includes the failure point, for example the patient's complaint of long waiting time for the doctor due to the. M2 “In some serious complaint we tried to identify the point of failure and where the fault is, but for some ordinary complaint we don't have time to follow every case because we only have the data once every 3 months received and back to the day the complaint occurred with the person who received the complaints is very difficult.".
N1 "We tried to ask the customer what went wrong, but sometimes the customer is not in a mood to go through everything with us and just keep complaining". R1 "We always try to find the failure point so we know where we can improve, but sometimes unhappy customers just complain and don't give useful information". R2 "I usually ask for details of the event that displeased them so that I can understand the cause of the complaint".
R4 "We do sometimes, and if a complaint is serious, we usually informally discuss the complaint with each other." D1 “In clinical malpractice, it is always important to identify the root cause of the problem.
Dimension 6: Track trends and use information to improve service processes
- Current workflow for complaint handling
- Redesigned complaint management
- Mini interview
The gap refers to practice that is not related to the 6-step model of the complaint management system. All participants said that the hospital does not have a team of representatives to handle complaints Dimension 3: Solving the customer's problem. All participants said that there is no standard time that the complaint should be resolved.
21.4% of the participants have never tried to find the point of failure in the service system when the complaint is accepted. Complaints can also be made through any complaint channel, directly to the patient's representative who is on standby at the hospital reception. Once the concern is resolved, the patient representative should ask the patient about satisfaction with the management of the complaint.
Half of respondents strongly agree that the current workflow for complaint management needs to be redesigned. A total of 72% of the respondents strongly agree that the standard complaint handling protocol will be useful to implement in the hospital.
CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION
Conclusion
Even though most respondents said that they have and currently use patient complaints in a way to improve service delivery, minority of the participants think that they do not have a role in using complaints to do so. The second gap is that Lelux Hospital does not have a specialized team to deal with complaints. The finding is in contrast to the six-step model in complaint management process, which stated that it is important to have a team of representatives to deal with complaints (Bendall-Lydon and Powers 2001).
In this case, all the participants said that there is no standard time and no standard protocol that they can use to handle complaints. At Lelux Hospital where there is no standard time and standard protocol, patient complaints can be overlooked and channel lost. In order to properly manage complaints, the standard time after which the patient's complaint should have been attended to must therefore be established (Bendall-Lydon and Powers 2001, Levin and Hopkins 2014).
The complaint should be analyzed to identify the points of failure in the service system (Bendall-Lydon and Powers 2001). However, the literature determined that a workflow should be able to cover all employee roles (Bendall-Lydon and Powers 2001).
Recommendations
Finally, the sixth gap is that only 28.6% of the participants said that the complaint data was used for analysis, which takes place every 3 months.
Limitation of the study and recommendation for future research
34;Creating a Patient Complaint Capture and Resolution Process to Incorporate Best Practices for Patient-Centered Representation." Jt Comm J Qual Patient Saf. 34;The Role of Cognition and Affect in the Formation of Customer Satisfaction Ratings Regarding Service Recovery Encounters." J Consum Behav. 34;When Consumers Complain: A Path Analysis of the Major Antecedent of Estimates of Consumer Complaint Response." Journal of the Academy of Marketing Service.
34; Turning visitors into customers: a user-friendly perspective on purchasing behavior in electronic channels.” Manag Sci.
Appendix A
Encourage complaints as a quality improvement tool
Establish a team of representative to handle complaints
Commit to identifying failure point in the service system
Track trends and use information to improve service processes 6.1 How often do you analyze the complaints?
Appendix B
