Our Practice Complaints Procedure
If you have a complaint or concern about the service that you have received from the doctors or staff working for this Practice you are entitled to ask for an explanation. We operate an in-house complaints procedure to deal with complaints. We aim to:
• Treat complainants with respect and courtesy;
• Deal with complaints efficiently, and give complainants a timely response;
• Properly investigate any complaint, and take action to improve services if necessary.
Please note that our complaints procedure does not deal with matters of legal liability or compensation.
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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 this way and you wish to make a complaint, we would like you to let us know as soon as possible as this will enable us to establish what happened more easily. If it is not possible, please let us have details of your complaint
• Within 12 months of the incident that caused the problem; or
• Within 12 months of discovering you have a problem.
Complaints can be made in person, in writing or by email. You may ask for an appointment with the Practice Manager, Ms Leigh Schoter, who will be more than happy to discuss your concerns. She will make sure your concerns are dealt with promptly, and explain the complaints procedure to you. You should address written complaints to the Practice Manager, at the address above or at l.schoter@nhs.net, or to any of the doctors. You may wish to use the attached complaint form. It will be a great help if you are as specific as possible about your complaint.
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Who will respond to your complaint?
Our Practice Manager, Ms Leigh Schoter, acts as our Complaints Manager. Dr Katherine Ball is the doctor responsible for overseeing the complaints process and for ensuring that action is taken to improve our services where needed.
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What we will do
We will acknowledge your complaint within three working days. We aim to have looked into your complaint within twenty eight working days of the date when you raised it with us, although in some cases more time may be required. We will keep you informed if there is any delay in investigating your complaint.
We should then be able to offer you an explanation.
When we look into your complaint, we 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.
As a practice, we regularly consider the outcomes of any complaints, to ensure we learn how to improve our service, to provide the best care we can for our patients.
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Complaining on behalf of someone else
Because of the rules of medical confidentiality, if you are complaining on behalf of someone else, we need to know that you have his or her permission to do so. A note of consent signed by the patient concerned will be required before we can release any information. Complaints may be made on behalf of a child, by a parent or guardian. Complaints may be made on behalf of a patient who lacks capacity to complain, by a relative.
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Complaining after 12 months
We would encourage you to raise any concerns with us soon after you have experienced a problem. If you make a complaint more that 12 months after the incident that caused your problem, it is much more difficult for us to investigate the incident thoroughly. In this case, we will do our best to investigate, and we will let you know if there are difficulties, for example if information is no longer available.
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Complaining to the Commissioner
For GPs, dentists, pharmacies and community opticians and their staff and systems, the commissioner is NHS England. If you wish to make a comment or complaint about these services, and it cannot be resolved locally with the Practice Manager, please contact the NHS England at England.contactus@nhs.net or 0300 311 22 33.
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All other local services are commissioned by a Clinical Commissioning group. If you have an issue with any other local services commissioned by Northern, Eastern and Western Devon Clinical Commissioning Group e.g. physiotherapy, accident and emergency, mental health services, hospital care, children’s healthcare, the issues can be raised with the service manager or the PALS and Complaints team.
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A patient or carer can raise issues either with the service provider direct, or with the commissioner of the service.
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Independent Review
If you are unhappy with the final response to your complaint, you can ask the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman for an independent review of your case. You can contact the Ombudsman at: The Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman, Millbank Tower, Millbank, London, SW1P 4QP Telephone: 0345 0154033 www.ombudsman.org.uk