Practice Policies & Patient Information

About our practice

The doctors and staff at Preston Hill Surgery are proud to offer the highest standard of patient-centred healthcare. We run many clinics for the management of chronic diseases such as asthma and diabetes and offer a wide variety of other medical services.

This website contains a vast range of health information and resources, along with practical information on visiting the surgery. We hope you find it useful and informative.

MOTTO

Help Us To Help you.

Mission Statement

Working together with our patients to improve health and well-being

Vision

To provide high quality primary care services through an ethos of continuous learning and reflection, while ensuring all staff and patients are treated with dignity, honesty and respect.

Our Values:

To be committed to our patient’s individual needs and treat all patients with dignity, respect and compassion
To provide an ethos of openness and integrity while maintaining strict patient confidentiality.
To strive to continually improve our services through responsible monitoring and auditing.
To maintain a culture of reflection; understand when we have got something wrong and reflect constructively on feedback to identify learning opportunities.
To provide a safe, clean and accessible environment for our patients, staff and visitors.
To be as effective and efficient as possible in terms of the healthcare we provide and the business we run.
To maintain a motivated and fulfilled team by upholding continuing professional development, promoting a friendly working environment, developing strong working relationships and encourage collaborative team-working through mutual support and learning from each other.
To be courteous, approachable, friendly and accommodating at all times.

Disabled Access

Our premises are fully accessible to wheelchair users and patients with restricted mobility.
Disabled parking available with blue badge.

Our premises is equipped with a Hearing Loop, Please ask reception if required.

Complaints and Suggestions

Practice Compliments & Complaints

We make every effort to give the best service possible to everyone who attends our Practice.

However, we are aware that things can go wrong, resulting in a patient feeling that they have a genuine cause for complaint. If this is so, we would like the matter to be settled as quickly, and as amicably, as possible.

To have your complaint investigated, you need to complain within 12 months of the event happening, or as soon as you first become aware of the issue you want to complain about. The time limit can be extended in special circumstances.

Th Practice Manager Nimisha Shah is our Complaints Administrator. Details can be obtained at reception. Of course, if we do things well, you could tell us about them too!!

How to make a compliment or complaint

Whether you are happy or unhappy with the care and treatment that you have received, please get in touch and let us know your views.

Receiving compliments and complaints is important to ensuring good quality local healthcare in our Practice – helping us to find out more about what we’re getting right and what we can improve.

We hope this will help you to make your feelings and experiences known to the appropriate people. Should you have a complaint we hope this page will give you more information about what to do, who to contact and what happens next.

How do I raise a concern / informal complaint?

You can speak to any member of staff initially with your complaint. This gives you the opportunity to resolve any concern you may have without it going through a formal process.

Most complaints are best resolved within the practice and these should be made via the Practice Manager.

Formal Complaint

What we will do

We will contact you about your complaint within three working days and offer to discuss with you the best way to investigate it, including the time scales for a reply. We will aim to offer you an explanation within that time frame. Or a meeting with the people involved.

Find out what happened and what went wrong
Invite you to discuss the problem with those involved, if you would like this
Apologise where this is appropriate
Identify what we can do to make sure that the problem does not happen again.

If you feel you do not want to contact the surgery directly, then you can contact the NHS Complaints team on:

NHS England
PO Box 16738
Redditch
B97 9PT

If you are making a complaint please state: ‘For the attention of the complaints team’ in the subject line.

In General

If you have a complaint to make, you can either contact the Practice Manager or ask the Receptionist for a copy of our Complaints Procedure. We will endeavour to:

acknowledge any letter or Complaints Form within 3 working days of receiving it.
deal with the matter as promptly as possible – usually within 30 working days – dependent on the nature of the complaint.

Who can complain

Complainants may be current or former patients, or their nominated or elected representatives (who have been given consent to act on the patients behalf).
Patients over the age of 16 whose mental capacity is unimpaired should normally complain themselves or authorise someone to bring a complaint on their behalf.
Children under the age of 16 can also make their own complaint, if they’re able to do so.

If a patient lacks capacity to make decisions, their representative must be able to demonstrate sufficient interest in the patient’s welfare and be an appropriate person to act on their behalf. This could be a partner, relative or someone appointed under the Mental Capacity Act 2005 with lasting power of attorney.

Appropriate person

In certain circumstances, we need to check that a representative is the appropriate person to make a complaint.

For example, if the complaint involves a child, we must satisfy ourselves that there are reasonable grounds for the representative to complain, rather than the child concerned.
If the patient is a child or a patient who lacks capacity, we must also be satisfied that the representative is acting in the patient’s best interests.

If we are not satisfied that the representative is an appropriate person we will not consider the complaint, and will give the representative the reasons for our decision in writing.

Time limits

A complaint must be made within 12 months, either from the date of the incident or from when the complainant first knew about it.

The regulations state that a responsible body should only consider a complaint after this time limit if:

the complainant has good reason for doing so, and
it’s still possible to investigate the complaint fairly and effectively, despite the delay.

Procedure

We have a two stage complaints procedure. We will always try to deal with your complaint quickly however if it is clear that the matter will need a detailed investigation, we will notify you and then keep you updated on our progress.

Stage one – Early, local resolution

We will try to resolve your complaint within five working days if possible.
If you are dissatisfied with our response, you can ask us to escalate your complaint to Stage Two.

Stage Two – Investigation

We will look at your complaint at this stage if you are dissatisfied with our response at Stage One.
We also escalate some complaints straight to this stage, if it is clear that they are complex or need detailed investigation.
We will acknowledge your complaint within 3 working days and we will give you our decision as soon as possible. This will be no more that 30 working days unless there is clearly a good reason for needing more time to respond.

Complain to the Ombudsman

If, after receiving our final decision, you remain dissatisfied you may take your complaint to the Ombudsman.

The Ombudsman is independent of the NHS and free to use. It can help resolve your complaint, and tell the NHS how to put things right if it has got them wrong.

The Ombudsman only has legal powers to investigate certain complaints. You must have received a final response from the Practice before the Ombudsman can look at your complaint and it will generally not look into your complaint if it happened more than 12 months ago, unless there are exceptional circumstances.

Address:

Parliamentary & Health Service Ombudsman
Tower 30
Millbank
London SW1P 4QP

Phone: 0345 015 4033

Independent Complaints Advocacy Service (ICAS)

If you have concerns about or wish to make a complaint about the quality of care you receive from the NHS, or any other issues or experiences when using the NHS, ICAS can help. People using the health service usually feel they can raise such concerns with a member of staff, such as a Therapist, Doctor, Nurse or Receptionist and the NHS expects that the person you approach will do their best to help you. However, if you are not satisfied by their response or prefer to talk to someone who is not directly involved in your healthcare, ICAS is there to help.

ICAS provide a service which aims to improve your satisfaction and reduce any confusion or anxiety you may have and ICAS staff will act as quickly, and creatively, as possible to support patients, their carers and families to deal with concerns before they become more serious.

Complaints resolution staff at your Practice should give you further information about making a complaint and assist you in contacting ICAS, should you require help with your complaint from outside the NHS.

Please refer to the ICAS website for more information.

Telephone: 0300 330 5454

Confidentiality

All complaints will be treated in the strictest confidence.

Where the investigation of the complaint requires consideration of the patient’s medical records, we will inform the patient or person acting on his/her behalf if the investigation will involve disclosure of information contained in those records to a person other than the Practice or an employee of the Practice.

We keep a record of all complaints and copies of all correspondence relating to complaints, but such records will be kept separate from patients’ medical records.

Statistics and reporting

The Practice must submit to the local primary care organisation periodically/at agreed intervals details of the number of complaints received and actioned.

Confidentiality

The Practice has a comprehensive confidentiality policy. An abridged version is on display in the waiting room at the surgery. A full copy can be made available to patients on request. If you wish to speak to a member of staff privately, please ask and a room will be made available.

Use of Personal Health Information

We are registered under the Data Protection Act and have a robust system in place to protect your confidentiality. Personal health information is used to monitor the practices screening activities.

Occasionally, anonymous health information is sent to our local Primary Health Care Trust to monitor quality standards and post verification. All our staff are fully trained in confidentiality procedures and we operate a continuous cycle of monitoring and evaluation to ensure that high standards regarding patients’ confidentiality are constantly met.

Patients Access to Their Medical Records

As a patient you have the right to access your medical records. Written request with valid reason should be always be made whenever you want access to your records. You can get them within 30 days as under the Data Protection Act 1998.

GP Income

Zero Tolerance

The practice fully supports the NHS Zero Tolerance Policy. The aim of this policy is to tackle the increasing problem of violence against staff working in the NHS and ensures that doctors and their staff have a right to care for others without fear of being attacked or abused.

We understand that ill patients do not always act in a reasonable manner and will take this into consideration when trying to deal with a misunderstanding or complaint. We ask you to treat your doctors and their staff courteously and act reasonably.

All incidents will be followed up and you will be sent a formal warning after a second incident or removed from the practice list after a third incident if your behaviour has been unreasonable.

However, aggressive behaviour, be it violent or verbal abusive, will not be tolerated and may result in you being removed from the Practice list and, in extreme cases, the Police will be contacted if an incident is taking place and the patient is posing a threat to staff or other patients.

Removal from the Practice List

A good patient-doctor relationship, based on mutual respect and trust, is the cornerstone of good patient care. The removal of patients from our list is an exceptional and rare event and is a last resort in an impaired patient-practice relationship. When trust has irretrievably broken down, it is in the patient’s interest, just as much as that of The Surgery, that they should find a new practice. An exception to this is on immediate removal on the grounds of violence e.g. when the Police are involved.

Removing other members of the household

In rare cases, however, because of the possible need to visit patients at home it may be necessary to terminate responsibility for other members of the family or the entire household. The prospect of visiting patients where a relative who is no longer a patient of the practice by virtue of their unacceptable behaviour resides, or being regularly confronted by the removed patient, may make it too difficult for the practice to continue to look after the whole family. This is particularly likely where the patient has been removed because of violence or threatening behaviour and keeping the other family members could put doctors or their staff at risk.