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Background  In most health care systems disciplinary boards have been organised in order to process patients’ complaints about health professionals. Although, the safe-guarding of the legal rights of the involved parties is a crucial concern, there is limited knowledge about what role the complaint process plays with regard to board decision outcomes. Using complaint cases towards general practitioners, the aim of this study was to identify what process factors are statistically associated with disciplinary actions as seen from the party of the complainant and the defendant general practitioner, respectively.    Methods  Danish Patient Complaints Board decisions concerning general practitioners completed in 2007 were examined. Information on process factors was extracted from the case files and included  complaint delay,  complainant’s  lawyer involvement,  the number of  general practitioners involved, event duration ,  expert witness involvement, case management duration  and  decision outcome  (discipline or no discipline). Multiple logistic regression analyses were performed on compound case decisions eventually involving more general practitioners (as seen from the complainant’s side) and on separated decisions (as seen from the defendant general practitioner’s side).    Results  From the general practitioner’s side, when the number of  general practitioners involved  in a complaint case increased, odds of being disciplined significantly decreased (OR=0.661 per additional general practitioner involved, p<0.001). Contrarily, from the complainant’s side, no association could be detected between complaining against a plurality of general practitioners and the odds of at least one general practitioner being disciplined. From both sides, longer  case management duration  was associated with higher odds of discipline (OR=1.038 per additional month, p=0.010). No association could be demonstrated with regard to  complaint delay, lawyer involvement, event duration,  or  expert witness involvement . There was  lawyer involvement  in 5% of cases and  expert witness involvement  in 92% of cases. The mean  complaint delay  was 3 months and 18 days and the mean  case management duration  was 14 months and 7 days.    Conclusions  Certain complaint process factors might be statistically associated with decision outcomes. However, the impact diverges as seen from the different parties. Future studies are merited in order to uncover the judicial mechanisms lying behind.

Process-related factors associated with disciplinary board decisions