Comments and Complaints

If you have a complaint about the care or service you have received from our doctors or any member of our practice team, please let us know.

We follow the NHS Complaints Procedure, which focuses on local resolution. We aim to address and resolve any concerns you raise as promptly and effectively as possible.

How to Make a Complaint

We hope that most issues can be resolved quickly and informally, often at the time they arise and directly with the person involved. However, if this is not possible and you wish to make a formal complaint, we encourage you to do so as soon as possible, ideally within a few days or weeks. This helps us investigate and understand the situation more effectively.

If a prompt complaint is not possible, please ensure we receive the details:

• Within 6 months of the incident occurring, or
• Within 6 months of becoming aware of the issue, provided this is no more than 12 months after the incident took place.

This practice welcomes the feedback it receives from its patients and uses this as a way to make improvements to its workings and the services it provides. The practice operates an in-house complaints procedure, which is managed by the Patient Liaison Officer, Miss Laura Dantas.

Please contact the Patient Liaison Officer either in person, by phone or in writing, stating the nature of your complaint and giving as much detail as possible, such as the date, the time, who was involved, what was said and any other information that will help us to investigate.

Complaining on Behalf of Someone Else

Please be aware that we strictly follow medical confidentiality guidelines. If you wish to make a complaint on behalf of someone else, we will need confirmation that you have their permission to do so. This must be provided in the form of a signed consent letter from the individual concerned, unless you have legal authority to act on their behalf.

What will we do

The Patient Liaison Officer will acknowledge your complaint within 3 working days and will endeavour to respond to you within 14 working days. This may not be possible when the people involved are, for example, away on leave. If this is the case, we will inform you of the reason for the delay. When we investigate your complaint, we aim to:

• Understand what happened and what went wrong
• Offer you the opportunity to discuss the issue with those involved, if you wish
• Provide an appropriate apology, where necessary
• Identify steps we can take to help prevent the issue from happening again
• Offer you a meeting to review our response, or guide you on how to escalate your concerns to the Health Ombudsman if you remain dissatisfied