The National Health Commission ("NHC") has recently drawn up and issued the Administrative Measures for Complaints About Medical Institutions (Draft for Comment) (the "Draft for Comment") to seek public comments by October 15, 2018.
The Draft for Comment, comprised of 49 articles in seven chapters, covers "organizations and individuals", "communication between doctors and patients", "reception of complainants and responses to complaints", "supervision and administration", "legal liability", etc. The Draft for Comment clearly states that the "system in which the person receiving complaints shall be firstly responsible for handling" will be operated, provides the ways to file complaints, requirements on the reception, investigations, verification, timely feedback and other matters, specifies the different time limit for feedback to complaints under different circumstances, and stresses that a complaint shall be dealt with again if an objection is raised to the result of handling the complaint and is supported by new information and evidential materials. Furthermore, the Draft for Comment calls for incorporating the complaint management into the patient security management system and paying major attention to normalizing the complaint management in medical institutions; additionally, it strengthens the regulatory functions of administrative departments of health, and details measures on how to cope with violations of medical institutions and medical personnel.