Filing Medical Complaints Is Difficult; DoNoHarm.report Makes It Easy
(Tarrytown, New York—September 27, 2024)…Parents whose sons have suffered circumcision complications, and men who were damaged by their own circumcisions, will have a streamlined way to file complaints against the doctors and hospitals who are responsible, thanks to a first-of-its-kind online consumer complaint database, DoNoHarm.report. The service—which is free to use—was designed by the nonprofit Intact America, which works to protect children from genital injuries and medically unnecessary circumcision, and to support men harmed by circumcision.
DoNoHarm.report is currently available in the State of Georgia, and Intact America plans to expand the service nationwide. The organization is seeking grants and has launched a GoFundMe campaign at www.gofundme.com/dnhreport to help finance expansion.
A video overview of DoNoHarm.report is available on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgJ8FAnNAzA
DoNoHarm.report will assist consumers in reporting three specific genital harms:
- Circumcision complications, which include but are not limited to blood loss, infection, excessive or insufficient removal of the foreskin, meatitis, urine retention, amputation of the penis head, and death;
- Forcible foreskin retraction, in which a doctor or nurse forcibly pulls back a boy’s foreskin, which is tightly attached to the penis at birth, before it naturally separates, a practice that the American Academy of Pediatrics says should never be done. Complications include excruciating pain and trauma to the child, severe bleeding, adhesions, microtears in the foreskin, swelling, and phimosis;
- Circumcision solicitation, or pressuring parents to consent to have their son circumcised, including repeated solicitation after parents already have said no.
“Complaining about medical errors, physician incompetence or neglect, and getting it to the right oversight agencies, is very difficult,” explains Georganne Chapin, founding executive director of Intact America and author of “This Penis Business: A Social Activist’s Memoir.” “DoNoHarm.report streamlines the process and makes sure the complaint is filed appropriately.”
How DoNoHarm.report Works
There are three steps to filing complaints on DoNoHarm.report:
- Consumers can go to report and fill out a complaint form safely, securely, and at no charge.
- report uses the information to create state-specific complaint reports.
- Intact America submits the complaints to the appropriate state and federal oversight agencies. Depending on individual states’ requirements, this process can be automated, or may involve manual printing and mailing. The complaint also will be delivered to the physician and hospital/facility named in the complaint.
Intact America’s Multiple Objectives
Circumcision harm has never been systemically studied, according to Chapin; therefore, very little data are available regarding the number of cases and the extent of the damage done. The American Academy of Pediatrics, in its 2012 technical report on neonatal circumcision, admitted that “The true incidence of complications after newborn circumcision is unknown.”
DoNoHarm.report is a way to fill the information gap. “Clearly, it’s needlessly risky to take a perfectly healthy baby and cut off part of his genitals,” says Chapin. “The data we gather from DoNoHarm.report will allow us to quantify the complaints and associate them with individual practitioners, hospitals, or other medical facilities. Given that circumcision is the most common pediatric surgery, and a surgery that medical authorities deem ‘cultural’ and not medically necessary, the public and policymakers deserve to have this information.”
With regard to forcible foreskin retraction, a practice that Intact America’s surveys have found to afflict more than 40 percent of boys under the age of six years, Chapin emphasizes that reporting these incidents will serve two purposes. “It will discourage health professionals from causing harm and will educate them at the same time about how to care for an intact boy,” she says.
Intact America also encourages adult men to use DoNoHarm.report to report physical, sexual, or emotional harm they experience as a result of their circumcisions. “The act of filing a complaint is cathartic, even if their doctors are not still be in practice,” Chapin says. “Complaints filed by grown men will prove that circumcision causes lasting damage to both the baby and the man that he will become.”
Intact America invested $275,000 to develop DoNoHarm.report and seeks to raise $50,000 through its GoFundMe campaign to cover operational costs, expanding the service to additional states, and promoting the service to consumers. The Hudson Center, a nonprofit healthcare technology organization, designed the proprietary software for the DoNoHarm.report platform.
For more information or to view a demonstration of the platform, please email [email protected].
About Intact America
Intact America is the largest national advocacy group working to end involuntary child genital cutting in America and to ensure healthy sexual futures for all people. It does this by challenging social and sexual norms and empowering supporters and volunteers through advocacy and education. To learn more about the issues involved in the current conversation about newborn male circumcision, visit IntactAmerica.org and CircumcisionDebate.org, and follow Intact America on Facebook, X, Instagram, and TikTok.
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