Complaints Procedure

As a clinic we strive to provide the best possible service for our patients. However, we recognise that sometimes you may feel that we have not met your needs. If you have any complaint or concern about the service you have received from the doctors or staff working at this centre you are entitled to ask for an explanation.

We operate an in-house complaints procedure to deal with your complaint. This procedure does not deal with matters of legal liability or compensation.

Our promise to you

We will:

• Listen to your complaint or concern
• Respond by establishing a clear, appropriate plan of action, and provide you with relevant support and advice
• Improve the service however we can

How to make your complaint

We hope that we can resolve your problem easily and promptly, often at the time the problem arises 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 do so as soon as possible. This will enable us to establish what happened more easily.

You can raise your concern or complaint to any Wellford Medical Clinics staff member verbally, face-to-face or via email through our contact form.

You can also put your complaint in writing to the Registered Manager. If you would like assistance with making your complaint a member of staff will be able to help you write down your complaint.

Please be assured that any complaint you make written or verbal will be treated in strict confidence and have no effect upon the level of treatment and care that you receive at the practice.

If you would prefer a family member, friend or advocate to make the complaint on your behalf, they may do so and the centre will work with them and yourself to resolve the problem. However, whilst we can receive a complaint on your behalf we cannot provide any medical information to a third party without your consent.

To discuss or provide confidential information we would require a note signed and dated by you. A member of our staff would be happy to assist you with this.

What happens next

Your complaint will be acknowledged within two working days of receiving it. This may well be a phone call from an an appointed Wellford Medical Clinics senior manager to you (or your advocate) to make sure we fully understand your complaint. However, we aim to resolve as many issues as possible immediately if this does not require an investigation.

We aim to make a full response to you within the next 21 working days. During that time the centre will conduct an investigation to find out what has happened and whether there is any action that can be taken to put things right. If at the end of those 21 days we are still conducting our investigations we will notify you of the position and keep you fully informed until our investigations have been concluded.

As a result of the practice investigation we will:

• Make sure your receive an apology
• Find out what has happened and what went wrong
• Make it possible for you to discuss the problem with those concerned, if you would like this
• Keep you informed of our progress
• Identify what we can do to make sure that problem does not happen again

Getting further help with your complaint

We hope that through our practice complaints procedure we can resolve your problem satisfactorily. We believe that this will give us the best chance to put the matter right with you and the opportunity to improve our services for all our patients.

However, if you feel that your complaint is not being dealt with in a satisfactory manner you may contact: Care Quality Commission on 03000 616161

Independent Healthcare Sector Complaints Adjudication Service (ISCAS) on 020 7536 6091.

Raising a Concern

The Wellford Medical Clinics takes its Safeguarding of Vulnerable People responsibilities very seriously and takes all reasonable measures to prevent the risk of any kind of abuse or concern a patient may suffer, that may be raised.

Abuse can fall into any of the types below:

• Physical Injury
• Physical Neglect
• Psychological Abuse
• Sexual Abuse
• Financial or material Abuse
• Discriminatory Abuse
• Modern Day Slavery

All our Wellford Medical Clinics team are fully vetted and hold a DBS check and have been trained in how to support those raising a Safeguarding Concern. Whether its some concern you feel or actually at risk of any abuse, please be assured that we are trained and able to support you raising these concern.

Concerns can be raised verbally or in writing to any member of our team. The Registered Manager of Wellford Medical Clinics will be responsible for any concerns that are raised and will ensure you are fully supported through the process.

You can also raise your concern with your local Safeguarding Locality Team or via CQC.

General Feedback

If you have any suggestions or ideas to help improve the service we offer or share a compliment, you can give this verbally or in writing to any member of the Wellford Medical Clinics team where it will be shared appropriately and used to inform future service improvements. Feedback can also be received anonymously. We also provide a Feedback Form and envelope on site, if you prefer.

The Wellford Medical Clinics team welcome any forms of feedback as all feedback is used to continually review and improve its services and processes