In accordance with the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) 2018, Data Protection Act (DPA) 1998 and Access to Health Records Act, patients may request to see their medical records. Such requests should be made through the practice manager and may be subject to an administration charge. No information will be released without the patient consent unless we are legally obliged to do so.

Sometimes things can go wrong, a system fails or we can make human errors. We may not have not provided enough information to patients or in the format they may require. We take complaints seriously with a genuine desire to listen to the patient so we can fully understand what has gone wrong and why? This enables us to start the process of trying to resolve the issue for the patient and also put processes in place to ensure similar events cannot happen for others. Sometimes this may require us to provide further training and support for one or some of our team members in the Practice.

If you have a complaint or concern about the service you have received from any of the Clinicians, or any of the staff working within the practice please let us know. It‘s not about getting someone in to trouble; we need to know so that we can ensure we monitor the quality of our services and our patient experiences are key to helping us do this and to continually improve.

To enable us to do this we operate a practice complaints procedure as part of the NHS guidance instructions and system for dealing with complaints.

How to complain

We hope that most problems can be resolved easily and quickly, often at the time they arise and with the person concerned. If your problem cannot be resolved in this way and you wish to make a formal complaint, this should be put in writing and signed by the complainant, as soon as possible, ideally within a matter of days or at the most a few weeks. This will enable us to establish what happened and resolve your complaint more easily. If it is not possible to do this, please let us have details of your complaint:

• Within 12 months of the incident that caused the problem, or within 12 months of discovering that you have a problem, provided this is within 12 months of the incident.

Complaints should be addressed to Mrs Dawn Beadle, Practice Manager or alternatively, you may ask for an appointment with her in order to discuss your concerns; he will first offer an apology and explain the complaints procedure to you and will make sure that your concerns are dealt with promptly.

What will we do

We shall acknowledge your complaint in writing, within three working days of receipt and aim to have reviewed your complaint and provide a response to you providing details of our findings within ten working days of the date when you raised your complaint with us. When we investigate your complaint we would aim to:-

• Conduct a thorough investigation into your complaint.
• Offer you the opportunity to discuss your complaint in more detail with the Practice Manager if appropriate.
• Make sure you receive a full and open explanation of our findings with regards to your complaint.
• Identify what we can do to ensure a satisfactory conclusion for resolving your complaint.
• Identify how we can learn from the complaint and introduce measures wherever possible to ensure that re-occurrences do not happen.
• Offer our apologies for any distress or inconvenience caused to you or your family.

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 form template available from reception will need to signed by the patient or their parent /guardian , unless they are incapable (because of illness) of providing this to give authority to act on their behalf.

Complaining to the NHS Commissioning Board – NHS England

We hope that, if you have a problem, you will use our practice complaints procedure. We believe this will give both of us the best chance of putting right whatever has gone wrong and an opportunity to improve our practice and patient care.

This does not affect your right to approach the NHS Commissioning Board, if you feel you cannot raise your complaint with us or you are dissatisfied with the result of our investigations. You should contact the NHS England Commissioning Board:-

Tel: 0300 311 2233

NHS England. PO BOX 16738 Redditch. B97 9PT Tel: 0300 311 2233

Other useful contacts:

Patient Advice and Liaison Services (PALS) West Yorkshire. Tel: 0800 052 5270

Parliamentary & Health Services Ombudsman. Tel: 0345 015 4033

Practice complaints leaflet can be downloaded here including alternative language and easy read:

• Easyread Feedback Concern and Complaint Form
• Complaint Leaflet
• Complaints Leaflet (Urdu)

The practice complies with data protection and access to medical records legislation. Identifiable information about you will be shared with others in the following circumstances:

• To provide further medical treatment for you e.g. from district nurses and hospital services.
• To help you get other services e.g. from the social work department. This requires your consent.
• When we have a duty to others e.g. in child protection cases anonymised patient information will also be used at local and national level to help the Health Board and Government plan services e.g. for diabetic care.

If you do not wish anonymous information about you to be used in such a way, please let us know.

Reception and administration staff require access to your medical records in order to do their jobs. These members of staff are bound by the same rules of confidentiality as the medical staff.

Information about the General Practitioners and the practice required for disclosure under this act can be made available to the public. All requests for such information should be made to the practice manager.

Fair Processing Notice – Your Information

The average pay for GP’s working in Grove house Surgery in the financial year was £86,970 before tax and national insurance. This is for 4 full-time GPs, 2 Locums who worked at the practice for more than six months. NHS England require that the net earnings of doctors engaged in the practice are publicised, and the required disclosure is shown above. However, it should be noted that the prescribed method for calculating earnings is potentially misleading because it takes no account of how much time the doctors spend working in the practice, and should not be used to form any judgement about GP earnings, nor to make comparisons with other practices.

Under the Data Protection Act 1998 people have the right to see any files about them, including their health records. Access can only be denied if there are compelling reasons. the Data Protection Act replaced the access to Health Records Act 1990 on 1st March 2000, except applications to see records of someone who has died. The practice has a procedure for patients to apply to see their health records. If you would like further information or an application form please ask at reception. For information on Record Sharing and how your information is used, please click on the links below.

2024

Purpose 

This annual statement will be generated each year in June, in accordance with the requirements of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 Code of Practice on the prevention and control of infections and related guidance. The report will be published on the practice website and will include the following summary:

• Any infection transmission incidents and any action taken (these will have been reported in accordance with our significant event procedure)
• Details of any infection control audits carried out, and actions undertaken.
• Details of any risk assessments undertaken for the prevention and control of infection
• Details of staff training
• Any review and update of policies, procedures, and guidelines

Infection Prevention and Control (IPC)

The IPC leads at Grove House Surgery & Chickenley Medical Centre are:

GP Lead:  Dr Chantel Ratcliffe

Clinical Lead: Karen Lewis

Premises Lead: Dawn Beadle

1. Infection transmission incidents (significant events)

Significant events involve examples of good practice as well as challenging events.

Positive events are discussed at meetings to allow all staff to be appraised in areas of best practice.

Negative events are managed by the staff member who either identified or was advised of any potential shortcoming. This person will complete a Significant Event Analysis (SEA) form which commences an investigation process to establish what can be learnt and to indicate changes that might lead to future improvements.

All significant events are reviewed and discussed at several meetings each month. Any learning points are cascaded to all relevant staff where an action plan, including audits or policy review, may follow.

In the past year, there have been 0 significant events raised which related to infection control. There have also been 0 complaints made regarding cleanliness or infection control.

1. Infection prevention audit and actions

A recent infection control inspection (December 2023) highlighted some minor building improvements that are already part of the surgeries 10-year plan.  Other highlighted areas where dates hand sanitisers were opened and dates on curtains.

Our nursing team continue to monitor the infection control at both sites to ensure a high standard.

Actions- Hand washing audit & Infection control audit

1. Risk assessments

Risk assessments are carried out so that any risk is minimised and made to be as low as is reasonably practicable. Additionally, a risk assessment that can identify best practice can be established and then followed.

In the last year, the following risk assessments were carried out/reviewed:

• General IPC risks
• Cleaning standards
• Privacy curtain cleaning or changes
• Sharps
• Water safety

1. Training

In addition to staff being involved in risk assessments and significant events, at Grove House Surgery & Chickenley Medical Centre, all staff and contractors receive IPC induction training on commencing their post. Thereafter, all staff receive refresher training annually.

1. Policies and procedures

The infection prevention and control-related policies and procedures that have been written, updated, or reviewed in the last year include, but are not limited.

Policies relating to infection prevention and control are available to all staff and are reviewed and updated annually. Additionally, all policies are amended on an ongoing basis as per current advice, guidance, and legislation changes.

1. Responsibility

It is the responsibility of all staff members at Grove House Surgery & Chickenley Medical Centre to be familiar with this statement, and their roles and responsibilities under it.

1. Review

The IPC lead and Karen Lewis and Laura Marsden are responsible for reviewing and producing the annual statement.

This annual statement will be updated on or before June 2025.

Signed by

Karen Lewis & Laura Marsden

For and on behalf of Grove House Surgery & Chickenley Medical Centre

The practice is required by the Government under the terms of the latest GP contract to allocate all patients a named accountable GP. All patients have a named GP and will be informed at the first appropriate interaction with the practice. Where a patient expresses a preference as to which GP they have been assigned, the practice will make reasonable efforts to accommodate this request. Having a named GP does not prevent you seeing any other doctor in the practice. Your named GP will not be available at all times and if your needs are urgent, you may need to discuss them with an alternative doctor. Your named GP has overall responsibility for the care and support that our surgery provides to you. They will also work with other relevant health and care professionals to ensure that your care package meets your individual needs.

Contact between patients and health professionals is confidential. We encourage those under sixteen to discuss health issues with parents, but respect their wishes if, after discussion, they still wish to retain confidentiality.

In situations where we are both an individual patient’s doctor and health advisor to their employer, school or college, our first duty of confidentiality is to our patient.

Anonymised or patient identifiable information may be disclosed for the purpose of the provision of care and treatment and the management of NHS healthcare services.

This practice complies with the Data Protection Act 1998.

Risk Stratification

The NHS operate a zero tolerance policy with regard to violence and abuse and the practice has the right to remove violent patients from the list with immediate effect in order to safeguard practice staff, patients and other persons. Violence in this context includes actual or threatened physical violence or verbal abuse which leads to fear for a person’s safety. In this situation we will notify the patient in writing of their removal from the list and record in the patient’s medical records the fact of the removal and the circumstances leading to it.

What Happens when you are referred by a GP to see a specialist?

The General Practice Forward View made a commitment to improving the current interface between hospitals and general practice to provide more seamless care for patients and to reduce the number of occasions where patients are sent back to their GP unnecessarily following a hospital appointment. The aim is to improve patients’ experience of care, whilst also freeing up GP time.  In order to achieve this, new measures have been introduced into the NHS Standard Contract and a system-wide national working group has been established to drive action for improvement.

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