Confidentiality & Medical Records
The practice complies with GDPR, 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.
Further information is available in our privacy notice.
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
For information about your rights regarding access to records, please see our patient privacy notice.
Practice Complaints Procedure
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. We operate a Practice Complaints Procedure as part of an NHS sytem for dealing with complaints. Our complaints system meets national criteria.
How to complain
We hope that most problems can be sorted easily and quickly, often at the time they arise. 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. This wil enable us to establish what happened more easily. If it is not possible to do that you complaint should be submitted within 12 months of trhe incident that caused the problem or within 12 months of discovering that you have a problem.
Complaints can be made verbally or in writing to the Practice Manager, Mrs Gill Cunnington.
Tel: 01924 271016
Email: wakccg.secretaryorchardcroft@nhs.net
What we will do
we will acknowledge your complaint within 3 working days and 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 your receive an apology, where this is appropriate.
- Identify what we can do to make sure the problem does not happen again.
We aim to respond in writing within 10 working days wherever possible.
Complaining on behalf of someone else
We keep strictly to the rules of patient confidentiality. If you are complaining on behalf of someone else we have to know that you have their permission. A written lettter of authorisation, or a completed patient consent form (available at reception) from that person will be needed
What you can do next
We hope that you will use the practice complaints procedure as we believe that this will give us the best chance of putting right whatever has gone wrong and the opportunity to improve our Practice.
This does not affect your right to contact NHS England if you feel you cannot raise your conplaint with us
NHS England, PO Box 16738, Redditch, B97 9PT
Tel: 0300311 22 33 (Monday to Friday 8am to 6pm, excluding English Bank Holidays)
nhscommissioningboard@hscic.gov.uk
You can also contact The Independent Complains Advocacy Service (ICAS), a confidential advocacy support service that is free and completely independent of the NHS on 01256 463758
If you remain dissatisfied with the responses to your complaint, you have the right to ask the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman to review your case.
The Parliamentary and health Service Ombudsman, Millbank Tower, Millbank, London SW1P 4QO Tel: 0345 015 4033 www.ombudsman.org.uk
Violence Policy
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.
Privacy Notice