Practice Complaints Procedure

ST FILLAN’S MEDICAL CENTRE

PRACTICE COMPLAINTS PROCEDURE

We endeavour to give you the best service possible, but there may be occasions when you feel you wish to express dissatisfaction. The purpose of this is to explain what to do if you have a complaint about the service the practice provides for you.

If you have a complaint or concern about the service you have received from the doctors or any of the staff working in this practice, please let us know. We operate a practice complaints procedure as part of a National Health Service system for dealing with complaints. This procedure does not deal with matters of legal liability or compensation, but we hope you will use it to give us an opportunity for looking into, and if necessary correcting, any problems that may have arisen or mistakes that have been made.

How to Complain We hope that most problems can be sorted out easily and quickly, often at the time they arise and with the person concerned. If your problem cannot be sorted out in this way and you wish to make a complaint, we would like you to let us know as soon as possible - ideally within a matter of days or at most a few weeks - because this will enable us to establish what happened more easily. If it is not possible to do that, please let us have details of your complaint:

 within 12 months of the incident that caused the problem

Complaints must be put in writing and addressed to the Practice Manager. It will be a great help if you are as specific as possible about your complaint.

What We Shall Do We shall acknowledge your complaint within three working days and aim to have looked into your complaint within ten working days of the date when you raised it with us. We shall then be in a position to offer you an explanation, or a meeting with the people involved. When we look into your complaint, we shall aim to:

 find out what happened and what went wrong;  make it possible for you to discuss the problem with those concerned, if you would like this;  make sure you receive an apology, where this is appropriate;  identify what we can do to make sure the problem doesn’t happen again.

Complaining on Behalf of Someone Else

G:Complaints\Complaints Procedure\COMPROC We keep to the strict rules of medical and personal confidentiality. If you wish to make a complaint and are not the patient involved, we will require the written consent of the patient to confirm that they are unhappy with their treatment and that we can deal with someone else about it.

Please ask at reception for the Complaints Form which contains a suitable authority for the patient to sign to enable the complaint to proceed.

Where the patient is incapable of providing consent due to illness or accident, it may still be possible to deal with the complaint. Please provide the precise details of the circumstances which prevent this in your covering letter.

Please note that we are unable to discuss any issue relating to someone else without their express permission, which must be in writing, unless the circumstances above apply.

We may still need to correspond direct with the patient, or may be able to deal direct with the third party, and this depends on the wording of the authority provided.

We hope that, if you have a problem, you will use our practice complaints procedure. We believe that this will give us the best chance of putting right whatever has gone wrong and an opportunity to improve our practice. However, if you are dissatisfied with the results of our investigation, you should contact the:-

NHS England P.O.Box 16738 Redditch B97 9PT

Telephone:- 0300 311 22 33 (Monday to Friday 8am – 6pm, (excluding English Bank Holidays)

Email: [email protected]

If you remain dissatisfied, you should then contact the Ombudsman for further advice:- The Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman Millbank Tower Millbank London SW1P 4QP Tel:- 0345 015 4033

Complaints Review

G:Complaints\Complaints Procedure\COMPROC All complaints will be logged and given a reference number and any other identifiable data removed to ensure confidentiality. Information held will relate to the nature of the complaint, date discussed and action taken as well as learning points. The Practice Manager will ensure that all staff are aware of any areas of change in working practice which arise as a result of the review.

A review of the complaints will take place in March each year to ensure new procedures have been implemented.

G:Complaints\Complaints Procedure\COMPROC