Our practice aims to provide high quality health care to our patients and will treat you with courtesy and respect, maintaining confidentiality at all times. In addition, we expect our patients to keep appointments made or to cancel appointments in good time and to advise us as soon as possible of any changes to your name, address or telephone number.
The practice maintains the right to remove from the practice list any patient who is violent or abusive to any GP or any other person on the practice premises.
PATIENTS' CHARTER
What you can expect from us:
We aim:
- to provide a high quality service at all times, intended to meet the health needs of you and your family and to treat you with courtesy and respect;
- to offer quickly the most appropriate care by suitably qualified people who will explain your condition and treatment in an understandable way;
- to provide a non-urgent appointment with a suitable clinician within 10 working days;
- to provide, for emergency conditions, a consultation with a suitable clinician on the same day;
- to provide repeat prescriptions within two working days;
- to provide home visits for those too ill to attend the Health Centre;
- to treat all information and details in the strictest confidence and to give you access to your health records subject to any limitations of the law.
What we expect from you:
- to attend appointments on time, or give adequate notice if you have to cancel;
- to request a home visit only when too ill to attend surgery and not for social convenience. If possible, requests should be made by 10am to allow us to plan the day’s work;
- to request an “Out-of-Hours” consultation or visit “A&E” only when truly necessary;
- to treat staff with the courtesy you would expect to receive;
- to try to attend Health Promotion Clinics when invited;
- to request repeat prescriptions well in advance;
- to try to maintain a healthy lifestyle.
NHS ZERO TOLERANCE
This practice strongly supports the Scottish Government’s Policy on zero tolerance.
Violence and abuse is a growing concern within the NHS. The Doctors and their staff have the right to care for others without fear of being attacked or abused. We ask that you treat your GP and practice staff properly without violence or abuse, be it verbally, physically or in any threatening manner whatsoever. Should a patient be violent, abusive or aggressive to a doctor or any member of their staff, we will ask that their name be removed from our list of patients with immediate effect. They will then have to contact the local Health Board (0845 300 1024) to register with a new practice. We will not hesitate to summon the police to remove offenders from the practice premises. In the event of the individual having already left the premises, they will always be reported to the police.
PATIENT INFORMATION
In order to improve patient care, our surgery continually reviews its patient health care and prescribing policies. To facilitate these reviews, it will be necessary for the Prescribing Support Pharmacist or other Health Care Professionals to visit or contact the practice on a regular basis and offer advice on improvements to patient care or to collate information. These reviews will be carried out in the following way: checking of individual patient manual/computer records and the sharing of information between health care agencies. If any patient objects to this, or they wish to discuss any aspect of this policy, please ask to speak to the Practice Manager.
DATA PROTECTION
Our Practice is registered with the Data Protection Registrar. Typical activities are: The Administration of Patient Records; The Provision of General Medical Services; Other Medical, Pharmaceutical, Nursing or Ophthalmic Treatment or Care; Pathology or Other Investigative Services; Diagnosis, Therapy, Rehabilitation, Preventative Care, Screen And Follow-Up Health Services; Analysis of Management Purposes and Statutory Returns, etc. Data subjects are: Current, Past and Prospective Patients; Current, Past and Potential Employees; Survey and Research Organisations. To provide you with the care you need, we hold details of your consultation, illnesses, tests, prescriptions and other treatments that have been recorded by everyone involved in your care and treatment, e.g., GP, practice nurse, district nurse or health visitor. This information may be stored on paper or electronically on computer files.
We will provide an Emergency Care Summary (ECS) to Accident and Emergency (A&E) departments and to Out-of-Hours (OOH) on request. The ECS contains basic information about you such as prescribing and allergy information and is designed to enhance your care in an emergency situation. The practice commends this system which can be accessed electronically by OOH and A&E departments throughout Scotland. You can, however, opt out of this service by writing to the Practice Manager.
Our practice participates in regional and national programmes such as the cervical cytology and breast-screening services. Your name, address, date of birth and Community Health Index (CHI) number may be provided to these organisations so you can be included in these NHS health-screening initiatives. We are required to provide basic details about you to NHS Dumfries & Galloway and also to NHS Services Scotland in order to receive payment for any services provided to you. These organisations have a duty to protect public funds and are authorised to verify that payments are being properly made. We are required to co-operate with these checks and the disclosure of your basic data is a necessary part of our provision of health care services. Sometimes, we may participate in studies that are designed to improve the way services are provided to you or to check that our performance meets required standards and benchmarks. Whenever we take part in activities such as these, we will ensure that information is anonymised and any details that may identify you are not disclosed.
Our use of your personal health information is protected by a duty of confidentiality and is regulated by the Data Protection Act. The Act gives you a number of rights in relation to how your personal information is used, including a right to access information we hold about you. See the leaflet “How to see your Health Records” available at the Health Centre.
Everyone working in the NHS has a legal duty to keep information about you confidential and adheres to a code of practice on protecting patient confidentiality. Further information on this can be found at http://www.confidentiality.scot.nhs.uk/. If you have any queries or concerns on how we use your personal health information, or would like to access your information, please contact our Practice Manager.
FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT PUBLICATION SCHEME
The Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 enables any person requesting information from a public body to receive that information, subject to certain exemptions. The practice publication scheme document is available to view. Please contact the Practice Manager for more information.
COMPLAINTS
We make every effort to give the best service possible to everyone who attends our practice. However, we are aware that things can go wrong, resulting in a patient feeling that they have a genuine cause for complaint. If this is so, we would wish for the matter to be settled as quickly and as amicably as possible.
If you have a complaint or concern about the service that 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 an NHS system for dealing with complaints and our complaints system meets the 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 the most, a few weeks – because this will enable us to establish what happened more easily. If it is not possible to do that, please let us have details of your complaint:
- within 6 months of the incident that caused the problem; or
- within 6 months of discovering that you have a problem, provided this is within 12 months of the incident.
Complaints should be addressed to Mrs Jeannette Shennan, Practice Manager, or any of the Doctors. Alternatively, you may ask for an appointment in order to discuss your concerns. The member of staff you meet with will explain the complaints procedure and will make sure that your concerns are dealt with promptly. It would be a great help if you are as specific as possible about your complaint.
- What We Shall Do
We shall acknowledge your complaint within 2 working days and aim to have looked into your complaint within 10 working days of the date when you raised it with us. We shall then be in a position to give you an explanation, or offer a meeting with those involved. In investigating your complaint, we shall aim to:
- find out what happened and what went wrong;
- enable you to discuss the problem with those concerned, if you would like this;
- ensure you receive an apology, where this is appropriate;
- identify what we can do to make sure the problem doesn’t happen again.
- 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.
APPOINTMENTS 01556 610331 OUT OF HOURS 01556 610331 NHS24 111
