Violence Statement
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 are obliged to 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.
The Eastern health and Social Services Board is then responsible for providing further medical care for such patients.
Comments & Complaints
Although we endeavour to give you the best possible service, there will be times when you feel you have received less than this. The following explains the procedures to sollow if you have a complaint about the service we provide. We would ask you to note that we do have to respect our duty of confidentiality to our patients. Therefore, the patient's consent must be obtained if a complaint is not made by the patient in person. The practice hopes that you will feel able to use our in-house complaints' procedure to give us the opportunity to investigate and, if necessary, put right any problem or mistake that you have identified. We will, of course carry out a full investigation of the matter and will offer you the opportunity to have an informal interview to discuss the complaint, investigations and our findings.
If you do wish to make a complaint, please write to our Practice Manager or telephone for an interview to discuss the matter. The Practice Manager will take full details of your complaint and decide with the doctors how best to undertake the investigation.
The timeframe for making a complaint is usually within 6 months of the incident but this can be extended to 12 months in some cases depending on circumatances.
If the complaint is of an administrative nature then the Practice Manager along with one or more of the Partners will investigate the complaint. If the complaint is regarding a clinical matter then the investigation will be undertaken by all the Partners in the practice in order to obtain a broad spectrum of views from people who are in the best position to review the matter.
We consider it is important to deal with complaints swiftly so your complaint will be acknowledged within 3 working days and you will be offered an appointment for a meeting if you so wish, to discuss matters within 2 weeks. Occasionally if we have to make a lot of enquiries it may take up to 4 weeks to get back to you with the result but we will keep you informed. We hope that at the end of the meeting or investigation you will feel satisfied that we have dealt with the complaint thoroughly.
The practice records all complaints and reviews these annually. We also submit a return to the EHSSB on the number and nature of complaints received each year.
If you are not satisfied then the next stage of the process is to write to Michael Cruickshanks at the Eastern Health and Social Services Board, Champion House, 12-22 Linenhall Street, Belfast BT2 8BS and request an Independent Review with the EHSSB acting as an "honest broker".
Patient Data and Confidentiality
Confidential patient data will be shared within the practice health care team and with other health care professional to whom you are referred for care. Your data may be used by those clinical teams providing your care for the essential purpose of clinical audit.
Confidential patient data may also be required for the broader purposes of public health and audit, research, the provision of health care services, teaching and training. Data disclosure will be kept to a minimum required to serve the purpose and if possible anonymised before disclosure.
Confidential and identifiable patient information will not be disclosed otherwise without explicit consent, unless:
1. It is a matter of life and death or serious harm to you or another individual
2. It is overwhelmingly in the public interest to do so
3. There is a legal obligation to do so
In all of these circumstances the minimum identifiable information that is essential to serve the purpose may be revealed to someone with a legal entitlement to access the data for that purpose.
All individuals with access to your data have a professional and/or contractual duty of confidentiality.
If you are concerned about any of the ways in which your confidential data is used, further information is available from the Practice Manager. You are entitled to register an objection, which will be respected if this is possible.