Patients’ complaints to SMC against doctors could be resolved within 18 months

Among them is the setting up of a new inquiry committee to conduct a"fast triage" of complaints within three weeks.This committee can throw out cases that lack substance or are “vexatious”, refer the cases to a three-person Complaints Committee for investigation or channel cases in which there has been a possible misunderstanding to mediation.A legal committee will sit within the inquiry committee, which will have a better sense of the legal threshold for cases, he added.

This includes a six-month time limit for the Complaints Committee, which is likely to come with two more extensions.Mediation, which can be applied to a “broad” 80 per cent of complaints that reach SMC, is one way to ensure that such strict timelines can be met, Mr Tong said. “There is a broad spectrum in the middle where a lot more judgment can be used to look at the nature of the complaint, why this complaint arises, what’s the context of the patient’s unhappiness, and try and use that judgment to see whether we can funnel it to mediation,” he said.

Currently, of 155 complaints to the SMC on average annually, about 16 are referred to the disciplinary tribunal, which Mr Tong said is the “heaviest part of the resourcing”.

Source: Healthcare Press (healthcarepress.net)

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