HospitalInspections.org

Based on documentation review and staff interview the hospital's governing body failed to ensure the hospital established a process supported with policy and procedure to ensure prompt resolution of patient grievances. This affected two of three grievances reviewed that were filed since 10/01/16. The current census at the time of the survey was 22 and the patient sample size was 10, five closed records and five current.

Findings include:

Review of the hospital grievance log was completed on 11/30/16. A complaint was received via phone call on 10/28/16 from a patient who had recently received services from the hospital emergency room. Staff C, who received the phone call documented the date the complaint was received, a description of the complaint and under "Action taken to resolve the complaint" wrote, ".... will look into this".

Interview with Staff C on 11/30/16 at 2:15 PM revealed the caller/complainant wanted to inform the hospital of the outcome of his/her visit and did not want follow-up to his/her complaint. Staff C also revealed during the interview that, "we need to write a policy for this form that we use to log complaints that come in via phone call."

A complaint was received via phone call on 10/24/16 from the daughter of Patient #4 who had been in the hospital's ICU the week prior. Staff A, who received the phone call documented the date/s the complaint was received, a description of the complaint and under, "Action taken to resolve the complaint" wrote, "I spoke to daughter...." and dated it 10/28/16.

Staff A was interviewed on 11/30/16 at 2:15 PM. Staff A was unable to confirm when the last time she had a conversation with the complainant but thought, "it was a Friday maybe?" Staff A dated the bottom of the form 11/04/16 documenting completion of the investigation.