rights & responsibilities

Your Child Has the Right to the Best Care

Rights

Patients at Gillette Children’s have many rights. We’ve summarized them here.

General Rights and Safety 

• Our doctors and staff will treat patients and their families or caregivers with courtesy and respect. 
• We’ll provide a prompt response to questions and requests from you or your child. 
• We’ll provide language interpretation and translation services at no charge to you or your family. 
• You or your child will receive care in a safe setting—free from verbal or physical abuse, harassment, humiliation or neglect. 
• No one may restrain you or your child, except during an emergency or if a doctor has ordered restraints for a limited time. We’ll use restraints only to protect you, your child or others from injury. 
• We won’t ask you or your child to perform any services for Gillette in exchange for care. 

Your Healthcare 

• You or your child will receive appropriate medical and personal care based on individual needs and tailored to age, language and ability to understand. 
• You (and your child, if appropriate) will be involved in discussions about care. We encourage parents and legal guardians to allow their children to participate in making their own healthcare decisions. 
• Your healthcare provider will give you complete, current information about diagnoses, treatment plans and treatment options—including the risks and expected results of each option. 
• Your primary care provider will be notified of your or your child’s admission to Gillette unless you tell us to do otherwise. 
• Your provider will give you complete information about treatment or care that might be needed after discharge. 
• You or your child may refuse any unwanted care. 
• If you’re unable to make medical decisions, or if your right to refuse care is legally limited, your provider will write that in your medical record. 
• You or your legal guardian may create a healthcare directive that tells us what kinds of care you or your child would like to receive. If you have a healthcare directive, Gillette providers and staff will follow it. If you don’t have a healthcare directive, we’ll provide treatment that we believe is in the best interest of you or your child. 
• During a hospital stay, our staff will assess, acknowledge, address and/or treat needs related to pain experienced by you or your child.

Responsibilities

In addition to having rights, Gillette patients have responsibilities. 

Give Us Information

• Provide Gillette with a complete and accurate medical history. This history includes all prescribed and over-the-counter medicines (such as vitamins, homeopathic remedies and herbal substances) you or your child is taking. 
• Tell us about all current treatments, whether at Gillette or elsewhere. 
• Tell us if you have any advance planning documents that might limit the care you want us to provide to you or your child. 
• Give us correct information about how bills for your or your child’s care will be paid. 
• Provide us with changes of address and telephone numbers so we can reach you. 

Call Us 

• If your—or your child’s—condition worsens or doesn’t follow the expected course, call your provider or nurse right away. 
• If you need to refill prescription medicines, tell your provider or nurse five to seven days before you’re going to run out of medicine. 
• If you’re dissatisfied with any aspect of care provided to you or your child, inform any of your Gillette healthcare providers, or talk to our patient representative.
• If you can’t keep a scheduled appointment, call us as soon as possible.

Help Us Help You

• Take part in planning for care and discharge of you or your child. 
• Let us know if you don’t clearly understand the plan of care for you or your child, including how to carry it out. 
• Ask questions if you don’t understand the information you’re given.  

Making Complaints and Grievances 

If you have questions about your rights or wish to provide feedback, contact Gillette Quality Improvement at 651-578-5218.

Office of Health Facility Complaints
Minnesota Department of Health
P.O. Box 64970
St. Paul, MN 55164-0970
651-201-4201
800-369-7994 (toll-free)
health.ohfc-complaints@state.mn.us 

Office of Quality and Patient Safety
The Joint Commission
One Renaissance Blvd.
Oakbrook Terrace, IL 60181

File a complaint online

For a full list of your rights and responsibilities, visit gillettechildrens.org/rightsandrecords.