Patients' complaints: GMC could do better

The General Medical Council (GMC) needs to improve the quality of its customer care if it is to retain public trust, according to a survey conducted by Health Which? (October 1999).

After advertising in national newspapers for complainants the magazine surveyed the experiences of 264 patients who had contacted the GMC about a complaint. In only six of these cases was any action taken against a doctor. Eighty two per cent said that they were dissatisfied with the fairness of the process and 85% were left with a more negative impression of the council as a result of their experience.

The complainants said that they went to the council because they wanted formal recognition that a mistake had been made or wanted action to prevent the same thing from happening again. Only 27% said that they wanted the doctor to be struck off the register.

Over half the people said that they were given insufficient information about how to proceed with a complaint. After an initial contact with the council, 51 people decided not to submit a complaint. They thought that their complaint would not have been dealt with fairly, that the process seemed too complicated, or that submitting a complaint would cost too much.

No one whose complaint was rejected after the initial screening procedure was satisfied with this outcome. “The GMC is there to protect doctors not to do justice,” one person said. This perception is not helped by the fact that the doctor sees the patient's complaint and can respond, but complainants do not normally see the response.

Health Which? recommends that there should be more lay people on the council (only a quarter of the members are non-medical); everyone should get the same information about the complaints procedures when they contact the GMC; the public should be given clearer guidance about when to refer a complaint to the council and when to use the NHS complaints procedure; target times should be set by which the council would acknowledge receipt of a complaint and investigate it; complainants should get regular progress reports and be able to see a doctor's response to their complaint; and complainants should be told that they can ask to remain anonymous during a public hearing.

Complaints against doctors have trebled over the past five years, up to a total of about 3000 in 1998. And in its response to the survey a spokesman for the council said, “We recognise that we have not always been customer friendly.”

The council has agreed that all complainants should receive the same information about the procedures and where to turn to for advice. The council said that it was working with the NHS Executive on how to improve information about complaints procedures.