Hypothesised programme theories for patient-centric complaint handling and system-wide quality improvement* (stage 2)
| Procedural pathway | Programme theory title | Description |
| Complaint handling | Invite | Healthcare settings support and encourage patients and families to submit a complaint following negative experiences, incidents or negligence. |
| Respond | Complainants receive a patient-centric response that provides an explanation of poor care, admission of responsibility and learning or action taken from their complaint. | |
| Quality monitoring and improvement | Report | Important information from complaints is recorded in a reliable and standardised manner to allow for aggregated analysis. |
| Analyse | Aggregated analysis of complaints supports the identification of systemic and severe complaints and leads to actionable insights for improvement. | |
| Improve | Insights derived from complaints analysis are used to inform quality improvement priorities and interventions. |
*Hypothesised programme theories were conceptualised by the authors based on literature screening, lay partner involvement and 13 expert interviews.