Smart software for better quality in healthcare.The Healthcare Quality, Complaints and Disputes Act (WKKGZ) went into effect in 2016 – quite some time ago. The law was supposed to improve the quality of healthcare in the Netherlands. To date, the Wkkgz has brought improvement, but in a number of areas it does not yet offer the desired results. Why is that? You can find out in this blog. We present a brief overview of the Wkkgz, the recent developments and our vision on the Wkkgz.
Research shows that people living in the Netherlands are not always satisfied with the way health care providers handle complaints. It takes a long time, it is impersonal and people do not feel heard. According to the government, this had to be improved. So in 2016, the Wkkgz, the Healthcare Quality, Complaints and Disputes Act, came into effect.
The goal is for healthcare organizations to learn from complaints: to gain insight into undesirable events and respond to them, in order to jointly improve care. The law should also make it easier to involve a complaints officer, making it easier to avoid going to a disputes body, disciplinary committee or liability law, for example.
The Wkkgz applies to all healthcare providers, both large healthcare institutions and independent providers: hospitals, general practitioners, physiotherapists, company doctors, etc. The law also applies to providers of alternative medicine.
A better and faster approach for dealing with complaints
It turns out that many complaints can easily be resolved internally and personally, as soon as the client feels heard. The complaints officer can get a conversation going sooner. Is that not successful? If so, the client can file a lawsuit.
Care workers can report incidents safely
Every care provider must have an internal procedure that regulates safe incident reporting. The purpose of this is for employees to review incidents and learn from them so that they can improve the quality of care.
A stronger position for the client
Has something gone wrong, such as a mistake during an operation? Then the healthcare provider must discuss that mistake with the client and record it in their file. The client has a legal right to be informed about the quality of care.
Reporting duty of healthcare providers
Healthcare providers must report all forms of violence according to the Wkkgz (Health and Youth Care Inspectorate), as well as the dismissal of healthcare providers due to dysfunction.
Nivel, the Netherlands Institute for Healthcare Research, has conducted a number of evaluations and studies since the introduction of the Wkkgz. These studies show that almost all healthcare providers meet the set requirements, which is positive. Thus, there is sufficient support.
However, complaints filed through a formal, external channel have not decreased. Why is that? The reason cannot be determined unequivocally. It could have to do with the fact that the National Care Complaints Desk has become more widely known or because setting up a disputes committee is mandatory for every organization. Only the rise in the number of official complaints goes against the goal of the Wkkgz, which is to have more complaints handled internally at the healthcare provider.
The studies also show that there are still too few lessons learned from complaints, incidents and calamities. Nivel also identifies a cause for this: the emphasis in many organizations is placed on correctly reporting, following up and investigating a complaint or incident. As a result, there is less attention for the improvement potential of a complaint, while that is precisely the reason why clients submit a complaint.
A shame, then, that not all healthcare organisations have yet set up a proper learning process for complaints. If clients do not feel heard, they can submit their complaint to the disciplinary judge. The latter assesses whether a complaint is justified and can impose a disciplinary measure on the healthcare provider. But as an organisation, you hopefully do not want it to come to that.
That is why it is important that you do something with your complaints and learn from them. One way to do this is to take measures yourself to prevent the same incident or complaint from happening again in the future. See this as an opportunity and deal with complaints! On the other hand, the fact that 83% of complaints officers report that they feel there is a safe culture to talk about complaints and incidents is positive.
Quasir, a Zenya client and partner, also reports this. Quasir says that, fortunately, complaints are often dealt with “closer to the source”. This is good news because it means that clients and healthcare providers are looking for solutions together, under the guidance of complaints officers. So there is a healthy basis and motivation in most organisations to get to work on learning from complaints.
Complaints officers are open to learning from complaints, but sometimes lack the tools and support to actually take steps. A complaint is not very different from an incident. So a complaint can be perfectly captured in an incident management system like Zenya FLOW. Subsequently, the complaint can be handled and settled complaints can be analysed and compared with an incident analysis.
Zenya FLOW also helps you communicate regarding the complaint and file creation. This makes it easy to keep all stakeholders informed of the status and progress.
However, the proper implementation of an incident management system does not come easily – you will have to actively implement a complaint or incident management system yourself. For this, getting both the quality manager and complaints officer involved in the process is useful. In addition, you will need support from other departments in your organisation.
With our smart software, we support you in general quality management and complaint handling in particular. This way, learning from complaints will get the attention it deserves in every organisation!
Adelante Care Group applies Zenya for complaints management
One of our customers, Adelante Zorggroep, successfully deploys Zenya for quality and complaint management. Jacky Wolfs, senior quality policy officer and complaints officer, says: “I need to have a bird’s eye view of the entire organisation. That is why I am so happy with Zenya. Before, colleagues put everything on the shared drive and you had to really search. But now when I want to know something, I just look in Zenya – whether it’s following up complaints, points for improvement, incident reports or anything else. All the data always stays together nicely.”
Want to read more about how Adelante deploys Zenya? Read the success story here.
Request the brochure to have all information conveniently at hand.
Want to see what Zenya can do for your organisation? Request a free demo.
Contact our experts without obligation! We will be pleased to brainstorm with you.
