Complaints Policy

Patient Complaints/Feedback Procedure:

(Relating to relating to Elizabeth House Medical Practice only. For other care settings e.g. hospitals, please contact them directly.)

Elizabeth House Medical Practice strives to improve the way in which services are delivered to patients. If you have a complaint or concern about the service you have received from the doctors or any of the staff working at the practice or would like to provide some feedback, please do let us know. We operate a practice complaints/feedback procedure as part of an NHS system of handling complaints and patient’s concerns. By providing feedback, a patient’s future treatment will not be affected.

How to raise a concern:

We hope that most problems can be resolved easily and quickly, often at the time they arise and with the person concerned. Our aim is to resolve concerns amicably. If your problem cannot be resolved in this way and you wish to make a complaint, raise a concern or provide feedback, 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 this is not possible, please let us have details of your concern:

• within 12 months of the incident that caused the problem; or
• within 12 months of discovering that you have a problem.

Patients can submit their concerns by email or letter and these should be addressed to The Practice Manager. Alternatively, you may ask for an appointment to speak with the Patient Manager to discuss your concerns. It would assist us if you are as specific as possible, ideally stating names of staff involved, dates, times, places and a full description of events as well as some personal details about yourself or the patient on whose behalf you are raising a concern as well as what outcome you are seeking.

Next steps:

We will aim to acknowledge your complaint within 5 working days, either in writing or verbally. We shall then investigate your concern, and by doing so, 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 to do this;
• make sure you receive an apology, where this is appropriate;
• identify any learning outcomes and what we can do to make sure the problem does not happen again.

The findings of the investigation will be provided to you in writing. If you remain unhappy with the outcome, you are entitled to contact one of the outside agencies listed at the end of this leaflet.

Complaining on behalf of someone else:

If you are complaining on behalf of someone else, or about the treatment you feel someone has received, we need to know that you have their permission to do so. If we receive a complaint regarding someone else, we will contact that person to inform them that we have received correspondence from you.

If you are still dissatisfied:

We hope that if you have any concerns you will use our practice procedure. We believe this will give us a chance to put right whatever has gone wrong and an opportunity to improve our practice. If you feel after our investigation and conclusion that you are dissatisfied with the outcome, you are entitled to contact the following outside agencies, who will give further consideration to your concerns:

Patient Advice and Liaison Services (PALS)

For complaints involving hospital care, PALS are based at each individual hospital and details may be obtained from each hospital website.

The NHS Constitution – Patients’ Rights and Responsibilities

You have the right:

• to have any complaint you make about NHS services acknowledged and to have it properly investigated;
• to discuss the manner in which the complaint is to be handled, and to know the period within which the investigation is likely to be completed and the response sent;
• to be kept informed of progress and to know the outcome of any investigation into your complaint, including an explanation of the conclusions and confirmation that any action needed in consequence of the complaint has been taken or is proposed to be taken;
• to take your complaint to the independent Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman or Local Government Ombudsman, if you are not satisfied with the way your complaint has been dealt with by the NHS;
• to make a claim for judicial review if you think you have been directly affected by an unlawful act or decision of an NHS body or local authority to compensation where you have been harmed by negligent treatment.

The NHS also commits:

• to ensure that you are treated with courtesy and you receive appropriate support throughout the handling of a complaint; and that the fact that you have complained will not adversely affect your future treatment;
• to ensure that when mistakes happen or if you are harmed while receiving health care you receive an appropriate explanation and apology, delivered with sensitivity and recognition of the trauma you have experienced, and know that lessons will be learned to help avoid a similar incident occurring again; and
• to ensure that the organisation learns lessons from complaints and claims and uses these to improve NHS services.

Patient responsibilities

The NHS belongs to all of us. There are things that we can all do for ourselves and for one another to help it work effectively, and to ensure resources are used responsibly.

• Please recognise that you can make a significant contribution to your own, and your family’s, good health and wellbeing, and take personal responsibility for it.
• Please register with a GP practice – the main point of access to NHS care as commissioned by NHS bodies.
• Please treat NHS staff and other patients with respect and recognise that violence, or the causing of nuisance or disturbance on NHS premises, could result in prosecution. You should recognise that abusive and violent behaviour could result in you being refused access to NHS services.
• Please provide accurate information about your health, condition and status.
• Please keep appointments, or cancel within reasonable time. Receiving treatment within the maximum waiting times may be compromised unless you do.
• Please follow the course of treatment which you have agreed, and talk to your clinician if you find this difficult.
• Please participate in important public health programmes such as vaccinations.
• Please give feedback – both positive and negative – about your experiences and the treatment and care you have received, including any adverse reactions you may have had. You can often provide feedback anonymously and giving feedback will not affect adversely your care or how you are treated. If a family member or someone you are a carer for is a patient and unable to provide feedback, you are encouraged to give feedback about their experiences on their behalf. Feedback will help to improve NHS services for all.