The Patient Grievance: A Necessary Step Toward Accountability
Every serious medical malpractice case is a matter of truth and accountability. Before any lawsuit is filed, there is a fundamental question to be answered: What happened? For patients and families who have suffered harm, the first step toward getting that answer—and holding an institution accountable—is often a formal patient grievance.
A patient grievance is not a lawsuit. It is a formal request, often governed by federal regulations, that requires a hospital to investigate and respond to a complaint about a patient’s care. My firm recently filed a grievance against a major Georgia hospital. While I cannot share the specific details of the patient’s private medical journey, the process itself is worth discussing. It illustrates a core principle of my practice: The pursuit of justice must begin with the disciplined pursuit of facts.
Beyond the Lawsuit: Why a Grievance Matters
When a serious medical error occurs, there are often two competing narratives. The patient and their family have one account, based on their lived experience. The hospital and its providers have another, based on their medical records and internal understanding. These narratives often conflict.
A formal patient grievance, filed under federal law like 42 CFR 482.13(a) (2) for Medicare-participating hospitals, forces the hospital to open its own inquiry. The law provides that the hospital must establish a clearly explained procedure for a patient's written or verbal grievance and specify time frames for review and response. This process requires the hospital to investigate what went wrong—what happened with the surgical positioning, the post-operative care, or the diagnostic follow-up. This isn’t an option; it's a legal obligation.
For a plaintiff’s lawyer, this process is an invaluable tool for several reasons:
It creates a record. A written grievance, detailing the patient's concerns, creates a formal record of the dispute.
It tests the hospital's response. Does the hospital respond in good faith? Does it conduct a thorough investigation? The answers provide crucial insight into the institution's commitment to truth and accountability.
It forces disclosure. The hospital’s response—or lack thereof—can reveal critical information that might be otherwise difficult to obtain.
A Case Study in Analytical Rigor
In the recent grievance I filed, the patient had a new and severe foot drop immediately after spine surgery. A new neurological injury right after a major surgery is, at minimum, an event that requires urgent investigation. Was it a positioning error by a nurse, as one doctor suggested? Or was it something that happened during the surgery itself, as a different neurologist later concluded after additional testing?
To get to the bottom of it, we couldn't rely on gut instinct or assumptions. I carefully reviewed the medical records, a process that can reveal as much by what is missing as by what is present. In this case, the hospital's own discharge summary noted the new foot drop. Yet, despite this clear and immediate injury, the initial surgeon discharged the patient a day after surgery without ordering any imaging to investigate the cause.
This is the central issue of the grievance: A known injury was not properly investigated in the crucial post-operative hours. Later, a second doctor also failed to order diagnostic testing and instead offered a diagnosis that shifted blame to the nurses, which was later disproven.
This process—the detailed review of records, the deconstruction of conflicting narratives, the identification of key omissions—is how you find the truth. It's how you move past vague opinions to specific, provable facts. It's the difference between merely filing a complaint and building a strong case on a foundation of evidence.
Beyond the Law: Our Commitment to the Facts
For many firms, a patient grievance might seem like a small, administrative step. But for a practice like mine, it’s a non-negotiable part of our strategy.
The witness stand is a lonely place to lie. It’s a place of truth, where every statement is tested and every omission can be exposed. The work we do in the early stages—a thorough grievance, an analytical review of the medical records—is all in preparation for that moment. It's a way of dealing with the facts head-on, fairly but uncompromisingly.
This is what it means to be a principled advocate: We don't just file cases; we investigate them. We don't simply argue for our clients; we build a factual foundation so that the truth can argue for them. That process starts with a simple document, the patient grievance, and a serious commitment to getting to the bottom of what went wrong.
If you have a question about a potential medical malpractice claim, the first step is always to examine the facts. Call my office for a confidential consultation, and let's start the process of seeking accountability.
Keywords: Medical malpractice, patient grievance, accountability, investigation, medical records, patient safety, civil justice, Georgia medical malpractice laws, South Dakota medical malpractice laws.