The PRONE score: An algorithm for predicting doctors' risks of formal patient complaints using routinely collected administrative data

Abstract

Background: Medicolegal agencies-such as malpractice insurers, medical boards and complaints bodies-are mostly passive regulators; they react to episodes of substandard care, rather than intervening to prevent them. At least part of the explanation for this reactive role lies in the widely recognised difficulty of making robust predictions about medicolegal risk at the individual clinician level. We aimed to develop a simple, reliable scoring system for predicting Australian doctors' risks of becoming the subject of repeated patient complaints. Methods: Using routinely collected administrative data, we constructed a national sample of 13 849 formal complaints against 8424 doctors. The compla..