Complaints Procedure

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Your Views Matter

Fir Park Medical Centre is always looking for ways to improve the services it offers to patients. To do this effectively, the practice needs to know what you think about the services you receive. Tell us what we do best, where we don’t meet your expectations plus any ideas and suggestions you may have. Only by listening to you can the practice continue to build and improve upon the service it offers.

Compliments

We want to hear from you if you are particularly pleased with the service you have received from an individual or team within the Surgery and wish to pass on your thanks or praise.

If you can tell us what we do well, we can give others a better service too. We will ensure that compliments reach the individuals concerned. If it is appropriate, we will also share your comments with other colleagues.

Friends & Family Test

This is your opportunity to give us feedback. Please do complete the forms available by reception; via our website online; or by text message.

Comments

We also want to hear from you with any comments you have about any of our services or suggestions for ways we can improve. When you make a comment it will be sent to the Practice Manager for action or learning.

Complaints

We always try to give a good service but sometimes things go wrong. You can help us make changes by telling us about what is wrong and how you would like us to put it right.

You may want to complain about:

• A service
• Any action, attitude or behaviour of a member of staff which has affected you or someone close to you

Please get in touch with the Practice Manager if you need help or support in using our procedure, or if you need the information in another format.

How to complain

You should discuss any comments or concerns with the person providing the service, for example a Nurse or a Doctor, or ask to speak to the Practice Manager. If you are unhappy with the outcome, or if you would prefer to speak to somebody separate from the surgery, you could consider contacting the Patient Advice and Liaison Service (PALS). Contact details are included below.

PALS aims to:

• Help sort out problems informally and quickly on your behalf
• Provide advice or refer patients, families and carers to other agencies where appropriate
• Advise on the formal complaints procedure if necessary
• Feedback to the Halton Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) on common themes and concerns and bring about improvements and change

Ideally formal complaints about the surgery should be made directly to the surgery, in writing, by telephone or by email. You can, however, choose to complain to the Halton Commissioning Group if you do not wish to deal with the surgery directly. Contact details are included below.

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 about it.

Please ask at reception for the Complaints Form which contains a suitable authority for the patient to sign 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 covering letter.

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 direct with the patient, or may be able to deal direct with the third party, and this depends on the wording of the authority provided.

What happens when you make a complaint?

When the practice looks into your complaint it aims to:

• Acknowledge your complaint within 3 working days.
• Ascertain the full circumstances of the complaint.
• Fully investigate within 15 working days of the date it was received. If we expect it to take longer we will explain the reason for the delay and tell you when we expect to finish.
• Make arrangements 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 the practice can do to make sure the problem does not happen again
• Send a final letter setting out the result of any practice investigations

What if I am not happy with the response?

All complaint responses will include instructions on how to raise any queries with a complaint response.

The practice welcomes feedback and will undertake follow up investigations if you are unhappy with our original investigation or response.

Complainants will be contacted to agree how they would like their remaining issues to be taken forward. A meeting will be offered, or a further complaint investigation, as appropriate.

All complainants are also provided with information regarding the PHSO (Parliamentary Health Service Ombudsman), with their response.

If you remain unsatisfied after the practice has exhausted all attempts at resolution, you may wish to contact the Health Service Ombudsman. The Health Service Ombudsman is completely independent of both the NHS and of the Government. They can investigate complaints about NHS services and complaints about how the complaints procedure is working.

The Ombudsman does not have to investigate every complaint put to them and they will not usually take on a case which has not first been through the NHS complaints procedure.