[Supervising quality of care through the patients' eyes; a different approach to inspection is required].

The Netherlands Health and Youth Care Inspectorate (IGJ) wants to take the patient's perspective into account more often in its supervision of quality of care. The inspectorate already has some insight into this perspective via patients' reports; patients report complaints with the aim of preventing recurrence of the problem. However, the inspectorate does not further investigate the vast majority of these complaints and, furthermore, complaints with a clinical aspect are investigated far more often than organisational or communicational problems. Patients reports do not necessarily concern damage caused by deviation from professional guidelines, and if the IGJ really wants to look at quality of care from the patient's perspective then it should take the image presented by the patient more seriously. The patient's perspective suggests that it is important for the IGJ to pay more attention to organisational and communicational factors and other aspects of healthcare, along with medical professional standards.