(ARC Discovery Project) The voice of patients can be hard to hear above those of the many vested interests in the health sector. Complaints by patients offer an important window through which to focus on the quality of health services provided by professionals and by organisations, such as hospitals.

This project (managed from Sydney University) investigates the strategies undertaken by the health care complaints commissions in resolving complaints by patients about health services. This three-year project (2010-2012) examines the responses of health care complaints commissions to complaints by patients about hospitals in New South Wales and Queensland. It explored how hospitals responded to Commission decisions in cases that called for systemic improvements by hospitals.