Practice Policies & Patient Information
Access to Records
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.
Chaperone Policy
Grove House Surgery is committed to providing a safe, comfortable environment where patients and staff can be confident that best practice is being followed at all times and the safety of everyone is of paramount importance. All of our staff has undertaken formal Chaperone training delivered by the Primary Care Training Centre and have been accredited to carry out these duties
All patients are entitled to have a ‘chaperone’ present for any consultation, examination or procedure where they feel one is required. The chaperone may be a family member or friend.
On occasions you may prefer a formal chaperone to be present, i.e. a trained member of staff.
Wherever possible we would ask you to make this request at the time of booking the appointment so the arrangements can be made and your appointment is not delayed in any way. Where this is not possible we will endeavour to provide a formal chaperone at the time of request. However occasionally it may be necessary to reschedule your appointment.
Your healthcare professional may also require a chaperone to be present for certain consultations in accordance with our chaperone policy. The Clinicians record in your record when a ‘chaperone’ has been offered, declined, requested etc and our chaperones also make a separate entry also in to the Electronic Patient Record (EPR).
If you have any questions or comments regarding this please ask to speak to the Practice Manager – Dawn Beadle
Complaints Policy
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:
Confidentiality & Medical Records
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
GP Net Earnings
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.
Health Records
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.
Healthy Lifestyle Agenda Risk Stratification
Infection Prevention Control Statement
2022
Purpose
This annual statement will be generated each year in January 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.
It summarises:
- 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 undertaken, and actions undertaken
- Details of any risk assessments undertaken for prevention and control of infection
- Details of staff training
- Any review and update of policies, procedures, and guidelines
Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) Leads:
GP Lead: Dr Chantel Ratcliffe
Clinical Lead: Karen Lewis
Premises Lead: Dawn Beadle
Infection transmission incidents (Significant Events)
Significant events (which may involve examples of good practice as well as challenging events) are investigated in detail to see what can be learnt and to indicate changes that might lead to future improvements. All significant events are reviewed in the quarterly partner meetings and learning is cascaded to all relevant staff.
In the past year there have been no significant events raised that related to infection control.
Infection Prevention Audit and Actions
The latest Annual Infection Prevention and Control audit was completed in March 2022. This involves a comprehensive review of all aspects of infection prevention and control within the surgery.
As a result of this audit, the following changes are planned at Grove House Surgery:
- To ensure that all walls / surfaces are wipeable and damage free – two walkways, meeting room and nurse treatment rooms to be replastered.
- Floor covering in treatment room to be replaced
- All non-wipeable chairs to be replaced.
- recent learning from Flu vaccination clinics which were delivered successfully during Covid pandemic
The Grove House Surgery & Chickenley Medical Centre plan to undertake the following audits in 2022/23
- Domestic Cleaning audit
- Hand hygiene audit
Risk Assessments
Risk assessments are carried out so that best practice can be established and then followed. In the last year the following risk assessments were carried out / reviewed:
Legionella (Water) Risk Assessment: The practice has conducted/reviewed its water safety risk assessment to ensure that the water supply does not pose a risk to patients, visitors or staff. The last assessment was in August 2022 and is performed every 3 years.
Immunisation: As a practice we ensure that all of our staff are up to date with their Hepatitis B immunisations and offered any occupational health vaccinations applicable to their role (i.e. MMR, Seasonal Flu).
We take part in the National Immunisation campaigns for patients and offer vaccinations in house and via home visits to our patient population.
Other examples of Infection Prevention and Control activities:
Curtains: The NHS Cleaning Specifications state the curtains should be cleaned or if using disposable curtains, replaced every 6 months. To this effect we use disposable curtains and ensure they are changed every 3 months.
The window blinds are very low risk and therefore do not require a particular cleaning regime other than regular vacuuming to prevent build-up of dust. The modesty curtains although handled by clinicians are never handled by patients and clinicians have been reminded to always remove gloves and clean hands after an examination and before touching the curtains.
All curtains are regularly reviewed and changed if visibly soiled.
Toys: we do not have these in the surgery due to infection control risk
Cleaning specifications, frequencies and cleanliness:
We work with our cleaners to ensure that the surgery is kept as clean as possible.
Quarterly assessments of cleaning processes are conducted with our cleaning contractors to identify areas for improvement.
We also have a cleaning specification and frequency policy which our cleaners and staff work to. In 2020 we replaced the floor coverings downstairs in the surgery to render the cleaning process more robust.
Hand washing sinks:
The practice has clinical hand washing sinks in every room for staff to use. We have replaced our liquid soap with wall mounted soap dispensers to ensure cleanliness. We have a rolling premises programme of refurbishment to ensure that infection prevention and control standards are upheld.
Training
All our staff receive annual training in infection prevention and control.
Policies
All Infection Prevention and Control related policies are in date for this year.
Policies relating to Infection Prevention and Control are available to all staff and are reviewed and updated bi-annually, and all are amended on an on-going basis as current advice, guidance, and legislation changes. Infection Control policies are circulated amongst staff for reading and discussed at meetings on an annual basis.
Responsibility
It is the responsibility of everyone to be familiar with this Statement and their roles and responsibilities under this.
Review date
01/08/2023
Responsibility for Review
The Infection Prevention and Control Lead and the Practice Manager are responsible for reviewing and producing the Annual Statement.
For and on behalf of Grove House Surgery
Information on Children’s Privacy
Named GP
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.
Patient Confidentiality
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.
Privacy Notice & Subject Access Request Information on Children’s Privacy
Risk Stratification
Violence Policy
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.