We always strive to give our patients a friendly, reliable, medical service of high quality and professional excellence. Each year we deal with thousands of routine and urgent appointments and tens of thousands of telephone conversations.
We do our utmost to do all of this to a high standard. However, we acknowledge that mistakes can happen. If this is the case we want to do our best to investigate the problem, apologise if necessary and work to prevent similar situations reoccurring in the future.
We can only do this if patients feel able to bring their experiences to our attention. The sooner we are made aware, the sooner we can resolve any outstanding issues.
Making a Complaint
If you have any complaints or concerns about the service that you have received from the doctors or staff working for this practice, please let us know.
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.
If it is not possible to do that, please let us have details of your complaint:
- Within 12 months of the incident that caused the problem; or
- Within 12 months from the date on which the incident which is the subject of the complaint comes to the complainant’s notice. We will be pleased to deal with any complaint. We will explain the procedure to you and make sure that your concerns are dealt with promptly.
How to Complain
We ask that, where possible, complaints be submitted in writing. This gives you the opportunity to include all details relevant to the complaint, and mitigates the risk of aspects of your complaint being missed.
Please send all complaints to [email protected] or in writing to the practice address.
Our complaints procedure is designed to make sure we settle complaints quickly and accurately. We aim to acknowledge your complaint within 3 working days and aim to have looked into your complain within a reasonable time of the date it was raised with us. We will then be in a position to offer you an explanation, or a meeting with those involved.
When we look into your complaint we will aim to:
- Find out what happened and what went wrong
- Make it possible for you to discuss those concerns, if you would like this
- Make sure you receive an apology, where appropriate
- Identify what we can do to make sure the problem doesn’t happen again
- Discuss your complaint with you in detail, either by writing or in person
What you can do next
We hope that, if you have a problem, you will use our practice complaints procedure. We believe that this will give us the best chance of putting right whatever has gone wrong and the opportunity to improve our practice.
However this does not affect your right to make a complaint to the NHS South East Complaints Hub if you feel you cannot raise your complaint with us or you are dissatisfied with the outcome or final response to your complaint, they may be contacted as follows:
South East Complaints Hub
NHS Frimley ICB
Aldershot Centre for Health
Hospital Hill
Aldershot
Hampshire
GU11 1AY
Or telephone 0300 561 0290
If local resolution is not achieved you also have the right to refer your complaint to the Health Service Ombudsman. If you refer your complaint to the Ombudsman they will require a clear statement of what issues remain outstanding. Referral to the Ombudsman should be sent to the following address:
Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman
Millbank Tower
Millbank
London
SW1P 4QP
Helpline: 0345 015 4033
website: www.ombudsman.org.uk
email: [email protected]
Complaining on behalf of someone else
We keep to the strict rules of medical and personal confidentiality. If you wish to make a complaint and are not the patient involved, we will require the written consent of the patient to confirm that they are unhappy with their treatment and that we can deal with someone else on their behalf.
We will require authority which would need to be signed by the patient to enable the complaint to proceed.
Where the patient is incapable of providing consent due to illness or accident, it may still be possible to deal with the complaint. Please provide the precise details of the circumstances which prevent this in your correspondence.
Please note that we are unable to discuss any issue relating to someone else without their express permission, which must be in writing, unless the circumstances above apply.
We may still need to correspond directly with the patient, or we may be able to deal directly with the third party. This depends on the wording of the authority provided.