PRACTICE COMPLAINTS PROCEDURE

If you have a complaint or concern about the service you have received from the doctors or any of the staff working in this practice, please let us know.  We operate a practice complaints procedure as part of a NHS system for dealing with complaints.  Our complaints system meets national criteria.

How to complain.

We hope that most problems can be sorted out easily and quickly, often at the time they arise and with the person concerned.  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 or at most a few weeks, because this will enable us to establish what happened more easily.  Complaints must be made within 12 months of the incident or within 12 months from when the complaint comes to your notice.  Please request a complaints leaflet.

Complaints should ideally be addressed in writing to the Site Manager or any of the doctors, but if this is a problem then you can make a verbal complaint by booking an appointment with the Site Manager and a written record will be kept.  Alternatively complaints can be passed to NHS Hastings and Rother CCG or NHS England, who will either investigate the complaint themselves, or, with the complainant’s consent, will pass the complaint back to the practice to manager.

What we shall do.

We will acknowledge your complaint within three working days of receipt.  We will offer you the opportunity to discuss your complaint with the Site Manager and we will tell you how and within what time scale we will endeavour to deal with it.  We will keep you informed of our investigations into your complaint.

We will: -

• Investigate 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 you receive an apology, where this is appropriate;

• Identify what we can do to make sure the problem doesn’t happen again;

• Advise you of your right to take your complaint to the Health Service Ombudsman should you not be satisfied with the outcome within the Practice.

Complaining on behalf of someone else.

Please note that we keep strictly to the rules of medical confidentiality.  If you are complaining on behalf of someone else, we have to know that you have their permission to do so.  A note signed by the person concerned will be needed, unless they are incapable (because of illness) of providing this.