Analysis on 1481 case of medical complaints in a Tertiary Hospital in Fujian Province: A 5-year retrospective study

This study aims to review the 1481 cases of medical complaints from Fujian Provincial Jinshan Hospital in the past 5 years for providing a reference for new hospitals to deal with medical complaints, optimize medical procedures, improve medical quality, and enhance patient experience. The medical complaint information received by the hospital’s medical department and service center accepted and transferred by the health administrative department in the past 5 years was systematically reviewed and statistically analyzed by using hierarchical clustering method. The transfer of the health administration department (61.5%) and the acceptance of the service center (28.9%) were the main sources of medical complaints in hospital. The incidence of medical complaints per 10,000 patients in the hospital was between 3 and 6. The maximum number of complaints was 2017 (5.28 cases/10,000 population), and the least was in 2019 (3.2 cases/10,000 population). The median of complaints was 25, and May to Sep was the period of high incidence of medical complaints each year. In 5 years, the month with the largest number of complaints was May 2020 (41 cases), followed by August 2017(40 cases), and the month with the least number was November 2020 (11 cases). In the past 5 years, the hospital’s medical complaints were mainly in 4 aspects: medical process (n = 329, 22.2%), medical environment (n = 282, 19%), humanistic care (n = 277, 18.7%), and medical management (n = 209, 14.1%). The most frequent complaints were in clinical departments, among which the emergency, outpatient, and pediatric departments accounted for more than 50%. The top 3 complaints were doctors (n = 778, 53%), logistics (n = 284, 19%), and nurses (n = 239, 16%). The main way to resolve complaints was letter and telephone feedback (n = 1372, 92.6%). Our research recommends that new hospitals change their concepts, pay more attention to the services and quality of medical resources and logistical support, follow the best practices of patient-centered, perfect various medical complaint channels, and establish multiple methods. They should also properly accept and dispose medical complaints, improve the timeliness and feedback efficiency of responding to medical complaints, strengthen communication, exchange, and dialogue, and improve patients’ medical experience and sense of gain.