Compliments and complaints
DjHS regards the management of complaints very seriously and all patients, residents and clients entering the service are informed on how they can make a complaint if they wish. Every written complaint is investigated and a written response from the Chief Executive is sent to the person making the complaint within 7 days. Every year we review our complaints as part of our quality improvement program and we identify where improvements can be made. During 2005/2006 we received 24 complaints compared to 19 in the previous year. However, on the positive side we received 140 written compliments compared to 111 in the previous year. The Victoria Patient Satisfaction Monitor for the period ended February 2006 scored our complaints management as 86, compared to 84 for our same hospital category and 81 as the State mean, although it was slightly down on the previous score of 88 it was not felt this was a significant change.
- Graph showing % of complaints for 2005/2006
Although the numbers are small, 38% of the complaints were from people attending the Emergency Service. Some of these complaints related to the length of time they had to wait before being seen – which is not unexpected given that people attending this service are often very anxious and wish to be seen immediately. One of the miscellaneous complaints related to poor signage; this is an ongoing issue, which we are well aware of and plans are in place to improve all the external signage at Bacchus Marsh and Melton Regional Hospital within the next twelve months.