Practice Policies

NHS Constitution Policy

Please CLICK HERE to download a copy of our NHS Constitution

Confidentiality & Medical Records

Locked blue folder The practice complies with data protection and access to medical records legislation. Identifiable information about you will be shared with others in the following circumstances:

To provide further medical treatment for you e.g. from district nurses and hospital services.
To help you get other services e.g. from the social work department. This requires your consent.
When we have a duty to others e.g. in child protection cases anonymised patient information will also be used at local and national level to help the Health Board and Government plan services e.g. for diabetic care.

If you do not wish anonymous information about you to be used in such a way, please let us know.

Reception and administration staff require access to your medical records in order to do their jobs. These members of staff are bound by the same rules of confidentiality as the medical staff.

Freedom of Information

Information about the General Practioners and the practice required for disclosure under this act can be made available to the public. All requests for such information should be made to the practice manager.

Access to Records

In accordance with the Data Protection Act 1998 and Access to Health Records Act, patients may request to see their medical records. Such requests should be made through the practice manager and may be subject to an administration charge. No information will be released without the patient consent unless we are legally obliged to do so.

Complaints

Customer service form

We are very happy to receive constructive comments and suggestions for improving our service to patients. These can be made directly to Mrs Jeanette Hammersley, our Practice Manager.

If you have a complaint or concern about the service you have received from the doctors or any of the staff working in the practice, you can speak to Mrs Hammersley about it. We hope that most problems can be sorted out informally, quickly and easily, often at the same time as they arise and with the person concerned.

However, if you feel the complaint is too serious for an informal approach, you can make a formal written complaint to Mrs Hammersley, as the Practice Complaints Manager, or to Dr. Jane Cassidy, as the Practice Complaints Partner.

Your complaint will be acknowledged within 3 working days, will be investigated and a response sent to you within 10 working days of receipt. As part of the investigation into your complaint, Mrs Hammersley will offer to meet with you to make sure all the relevant facts are taken into consideration. When we look into your complaint we shall aim to:

Find out what happened
Make sure you receive an response/apology/explanation/ where this is appropriate
Identify what we can do to make sure this problem does not happen again.

We hope that you will use our Practice Complaints Procedure, as we believe this will give us the best chance of putting right whatever has gone wrong and give us an opportunity to improve the practice. However, you also have the right to direct your complaint to a higher tier of the NHS, where an independent Complaints Administrator will deal with your complaint. You can also appeal to this authority if you are not satisfied with the result of our investigation.

Information regarding your complaint might need to be shared with a Commissioning Support Unit. If you do not want to share information with the CSU, you will need to inform NHS England as part of your complaint. If consent is required for the investigation the patient will be contacted directly to ensure the appropriate consent is in place.

Complaints NHS England
NHS Commissioning Board
PO BOX 16738
Redditch
B97 9PT
0300 311 2233
contactus@nhs.net
Email: complaints@northants.nhs.uk

NHS England - Change in the process for patients wanting to make a complaint about services commissioned by NHS England

From April 1st 2013 NHS England is responsible for the direct commissioning of:

GP services
Dental services
Community pharmacy services
Optometry services
Health visiting services
Screening services

Making a complaint
If you are unable to discuss your complaint directly with your provider you can ask NHS England to look into your concerns.

The contact details for NHS England are:
Telephone: 0300 311 22 33
Email: nhscommissioningboard@hscic.gov.uk
Postal address:
NHS Commissioning Board,
PO Box 16738,
Redditch
B97 9PT.

This will direct you to a customer contact centre who will deal with your concerns and agree actions to resolve them.

Catherine Pelley, Deputy Director of Nursing,
Herts and S. Midlands Area Team, NHS England
April 2013

Our Practice Complaints Procedure is part of the approved NHS system for dealing with complaints and meets national criteria.

Zero Tolerance

Staff Protection. The NHS operate a zero tolerance policy with regard to violence and abuse and the practice has the right to remove violent patients from the list with immediate effect in order to safeguard practice staff, patients and other persons. Violence in this context includes actual or threatened physical violence or verbal abuse which leads to fear for a person’s safety. In this situation we will notify the patient in writing of their removal from the list and record in the patient’s medical records the fact of the removal and the circumstances leading to it.

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