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Patient agencies and complaints in Italy

Cittadinanzattiva, Active Citizenship, Via Mecenate n. 25, 20138 Milan, Italy; roberto.natangelo@libero.it

Keywords: patient agencies; complaints procedures

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

According to Bismark et al,¹ complaints that are brought to a Commissioner in New Zealand offer a potentially valuable "window" on serious threats to patient safety. In Italy, the Consultative and Conciliatory Commissions ("Commissioni miste conciliative") and the ombudsmen (second level organisations) supply unsatisfactory results or are not even established.² Furthermore, epidemiological data such as those of the NZQHS are very scarce. We therefore carried out a survey to explore whether an independent patient agency could facilitate local learning and action to improve the quality of health services.

Two hundred and forty complaints and accounts of presumed untoward events presented by people to our voluntary patient agency in Milan (Cittadinanzattiva) were analysed. Every complaint included one or more clinical record. Our aim was to compare allegations contained in the written complaints and the results of a retrospective review of the case records. An expert physician examined all the clinical . . . [Full text of this article]