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Civil rights as patient experience: How healthcare organizations handle discrimination complaints

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Anna Kirkland Open the ORCID record for Anna Kirkland [Opens in a new window]  and
Mikell Hyman Open the ORCID record for Mikell Hyman [Opens in a new window]
Anna Kirkland*
Affiliation:
1Department of Women's and Gender Studies, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA
Mikell Hyman
Affiliation:
2Institute for Research on Women and Gender, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA
*
Anna Kirkland, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA., Email: akirklan@umich.edu
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Abstract

The nondiscrimination clause of the Affordable Care Act, known as Section 1557, formally expanded patients' civil rights in nearly every healthcare setting in the United States in 2010. Regulations required healthcare organizations to name a person to handle grievances and set up an internal grievance process for resolving them. Drawing on interviews with 58 healthcare grievance handlers, this study examines how healthcare organizations respond to patients' discrimination complaints. We find that organizations incorporated the new right into preexisting complaint and grievance procedures, treating possible patient civil rights violations as patient experience problems. Grievance handlers smooth over problems using customer service strategies. These procedures diminish the efforts of policymakers to expand civil rights protections in healthcare. For civil rights to provoke real organizational change, discrimination complaints would need to be handled by professionals attuned to rights consciousness.

Type
Orginal Article
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 55 , Issue 2 , June 2021 , pp. 273 - 295
Copyright
© 2021 Law and Society Association.

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Footnotes

How to cite this article: Kirkland A, Hyman M. Civil rights as patient experience: How healthcare organizations handle discrimination complaints. Law & Society Rev. 2021;55: 273-295. https://doi.org/10.1111/lasr.12554

Funding information Division of Social and Economic Sciences, Grant/Award Number: 1654645

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