While patient complaints are an unfortunate part of providing eyecare, it can also shine a light on areas for refinement. Here’s what one medical defence organisation discovered.
In the ever-evolving healthcare landscape, it is important for all optometrists and ophthalmologists to understand and manage risk appropriately.
One way to explore your individual risk profile is to analyse previous medico-legal claims and complaints faced by peers and identify trends or common themes.
As Australia’s largest provider of medical indemnity insurance, Avant is uniquely placed to offer such insights. Using our extensive database, we have recently updated this analysis for ophthalmologists available on our website.
Frequency
Our data shows that over the five years from FY2019 to FY2023, an average of one in 11 ophthalmologist members were subject to a complaint, claim, employment dispute or another type of matter about the provision of their care each year. By comparison, this was one in nine in our previous analysis.
Types of matters
Types of matters refers to the proportion of matters that are compensation claims, regulatory complaints, coronial matters or employment disputes or other types such as Medicare.
We found the majority of matters related to regulatory complaints with claims for compensation the second most prevalent.
Common complaints breakdown
We analysed the data further to identify the types of medico-legal risks associated with compensation claims and regulatory complaints.
We found that the vast majority of complaints related to procedural/surgical matters. While this is unchanged from the previous analysis, the new data shows claims and complaints relating to procedural/surgical increased by 19% while claims related to diagnosis and consent decreased by 6% each.
Standard of care
Our data showed that in almost two thirds of claims and complaints (63%), the care provided was assessed by experts and/or regulators to have met the standard of care.
Insights from the data
The data from the most recent claims insights highlights procedural and surgical matters as being most associated with medico-legal risk. Below are some possible ways in which to help mitigate this risk.
• Regularly review your surgical techniques to ensure they are in line with current best practice
• Engage patients in a discussion about their condition, requirements, preferences and expectations – recognising that each patient is unique, and their expectations about results may not be realistic
• Following the consent discussion, check your patient’s understanding by asking them to explain in their own words what will happen
• Document your discussions – contemporaneous notes are crucial in continuity of care and when investigating any claim or complaint.
Integrating these steps into your practice will help manage your risk while delivering patient-centred care and building a strong therapeutic relationship.
Finally, receiving a patient complaint can be stressful and it is important to take care of yourself and seek support if needed. See Avant’s health and wellbeing resources or contact your MDO for further advice.
More infromation about the report can be found here.
About the author: Lissa Lao is a research and insights specialist at Avant Mutual.
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