Confidentiality
The practice complies with Data Protection legislation and we make every effort to preserve patient confidentiality. We ask you for personal information to ensure that you receive appropriate care and treatment. For the practice to function effectively it is sometimes necessary for medical information about you to be shared between members of the practice team. It will be shared with others only to provide further medical treatment for you, e.g. from hospital services, or to enable you to access other services, e.g. from the social work department.
Complaints
We aim to give a friendly and professional service to everyone who attends our practice. However, if, for any reason, our service should fall below our patients’ satisfaction, we take all complaints very seriously. If you would like to make a complaint regarding the surgery or the services we offer, please contact the Practice Manager, either by telephone or in writing, who will make every effort to respond to your concerns as soon as possible. All complaints will be treated as confidential.
The Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman website contains detailed information on raising a complaint about any aspect of the NHS in England. There is also a leaflet explaining the procedure of bringing a complaint to the ombudsman.
Freedom of information
The practice produces a complete guide to the information routinely made available to the public by our GPs. A copy of this guide is available from reception.
Patient charter
We aim to treat our patients courteously at all times and expect our patients to treat our staff in a similarly respectful way. It is your responsibility to keep your appointments, inform us of your past illnesses, medication, hospital admissions and any other relevant details. Our patient charter is available in full at reception.
For further information on any of our policies, please contact the practice manager.
Disability and discrimination
We will provide care, now and in the future, to all our patients without discrimination and irrespective of patient’s age, sex, race, beliefs or special needs. We expect that patients will show no discrimination towards other surgery users, members of the practice team or our colleagues in the NHS.
I have also included our out of hours notice
If you need medical assistance when the practice is closed you should dial 111, which is free from all landlines and mobiles.
When a patient calls NHS 111, their call will be answered by a highly trained call handler (CH). The CH will record their details and lead the patient through an assessment, using the NHS Pathways clinical assessment tool. At the end of this assessment, the NHS Pathways system will identify the nature and urgency of their problem in order to enable the CH to direct the caller to the most appropriate locally available service. These indicate where the patient should be directed to and when they should access this service.
Dispositions range from self-care advice for colds and flu symptoms, through to 999 ambulance emergencies. Many dispositions direct patients to primary care locations. For example, their General Practice.
This service is for urgent help and advice only. It is not designed for the request of repeat prescriptions, test results or for making appointments. Please contact the surgery during opening hours to arrange these. Remember to arrange repeat prescriptions with your GP in good time, particularly if you are planning a holiday.
If you have a life threatening medical emergency please dial 999.