Complaints

Practice Complaints Procedure

If you have a complaint or concern about the service you have received from the doctors or any of the staff working at this Practice, please let us know. We operate a Practice Complaints Procedure, as part of a NHS system for dealing with complaints. Our complaints system meets with 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 most a few weeks. 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 six months of the incident which caused the problem or
  • Within six months of discovering that you have a problem, provided this is within twelve months of the incident.

Complaints should be addressed to the Practice Manager or any of the Doctors.

Alternatively you may ask for an appointment with the Practice Manager in order to discuss your concerns. She will explain the complaints procedure to you and will make sure your concerns are dealt with promptly. It would be a great help if you could be as specific as possible with your complaint.

What happens next?

We shall acknowledge your complaint with 2 working days and aim to have your complaint looked into within 10 working days of the date you raised it with us. We shall then be in a position to offer you an explanation or a meeting with the people involved. When we look into your complaint we shall aim to:

  • Find out what happened and what went wrong
  • Make it possible for you to discuss the problem with those concerned if you would like to
  • Make sure you receive an apology if this is appropriate
  • Identify what we can do to make sure the problem does not 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.  Therefore we require that patient’s written consent, unless they are too ill to provide this.

Complaining to the PCT

We hope that if you have a problem you will use our Practice Complaints Procedure.  We believe this will give our Practice the best chance of putting right whatever has gone wrong and an opportunity to improve our Practice. But this does not affect your right to approach the local Primary Care Trust if you feel you cannot raise your complaint with us, or you are dissatisfied with the result of our investigation.  You should contact the Primary Care Trust Complaints Manager for further advice.  Our local Primary Care Trust is: East and North Herts PCT. Charter House, Parkway, Welwyn Garden City, Herts AL8 6JL. Tel: 01707 361281