Practice Policies

Confidentiality & Medical Records

The practice complies with 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.

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

In accordance with the Data Protection Act 1998 and Access to Health Records Act, patients may request to see their medical records. Such requests should be made through the practice manager and may be subject to an administration charge. No information will be released without the patient consent unless we are legally obliged to do so.

Complaints

Although we try hard to give a good service, inevitably things sometimes go wrong. We hope you will let us know so that your problem can be sorted out. Often this can be done easily and quickly at the time it happens and with the person concerned. However, sometimes you may wish to make a more formal complaint. When you make a complaint, we aim to:

• Find out what happened and what went wrong
• Make sure you receive an apology, where this is appropriate
• Wherever possible, put the problem right
• Identify what we can do to make sure the problem doesn’t happen again
• Give you the opportunity to discuss the problem with those concerned, if you would like this

Our complaints procedure is part of the NHS system and meets national requirements.

How to Complain

Please complete our complaints form which can be collected from the reception desk at either Pasture Road or Chadwick Street.

When writing, it will be a great help if you are as specific as possible about the reason(s) for your complaint.

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.