Patient Rights And Responsibilities

You have a right to expect a high standard of medical care from our practice and we will try at all times to provide the very best care possible within the resources available.

In order to assist us in this we require that you take full responsibility for ensuring that you do not abuse the service. For example, it is your responsibility to ensure that you keep medical appointments and follow the advice given.

Very occasionally a practice/patient relationship breaks down completely. In the situation the patient may choose to register with a different practice. The practice also has the right to remove that patient from their list. This would generally only follow a warning that had failed to remedy the situation and we would normally give the patient a specific reason for the removal.

Access to Patient Information

Confidential patient data will be shared within the practice health care team and with other health care professionals to whom you are referred for care.

Patient data may also be required for the broader purposes of public health and audit, research, the provision of health care services, teaching and training. Data disclosed will be kept to the minimum required to serve the purpose and, if possible, will be anonymised before disclosure. Confidential and identifiable patient information will not be disclosed otherwise without explicit consent unless:

• It is a matter of life and death or serious harm to you or to another individual 
• It is overwhelmingly in the public interest to do so
• There is a legal obligation to do so

All individuals with access to your data have a professional and/or contractual duty of confidentiality. If you are concerned about any of the ways in which your confidential data is used further information is available on request. You are entitled to register an objection, which will be respected if this is possible

Complaints

Things occasionally go wrong, and when they do we need to know to ensure we can put the situation right. We operate a patients’ complaints procedure as part of the NHS regulations and our system meets the national criteria.

A copy of our practice complaints procedure is available at reception. If you have a complaint please use the practice complaints form available at Reception or write to the Practice Manager, Mandy Gurr (who will forward to the appropriate department head)

Please make sure all complaints are in writing and either handed in at Reception or sent via post. Unfortunately we cannot accept complaints via email.

Zero Tolerance

We operate a zero tolerance policy for abuse and aggressive behaviour in the surgery. Any patient reported as having been abusive or displaying aggressive behaviour to any staff member will be removed from the surgery list.