Confidentiality

Your visits to our practice, consultations held, information gathered and records kept are held in the strictest confidence.

All staff, whether doctors, nurses, reception or administration staff require access to your medical records in order to provide care to you. All members of staff are bound by the same rules of confidentiality as doctors.

The practice complies with all relevant 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
• Opportunities to participate in research may be offered to you. In all cases, you'll have a written offer to ensure compliance with our confidentiality policy.  

Anonymised patient information may also be used at local and national level to help the Health and Wellbeing Board and Government plan services e.g. for diabetic care

Comments & Complaints

We try to offer a friendly, efficient and effective medical service to our patients. If you have any suggestions, about how we may improve our services, please contact - in the first instance - reception manager: Pam Bailey - Smith, who will be happy to discuss any such issues with you, on our main number 01527 872163, or Martin Rutter - Practice Manager.

Please click here to give us feedback.

It is always our intention to achieve complaint resolution speedily, to your satisfaction, within the practice.

If you are still not satisfied then NHS England are responsible for contracting our services. Their website directs to the NHS Choices page for details about how to make a complaint. Their Customer Call Centre is on: 0300 311 22 33.

Ultimately if you have been through the previous processes then complaints can be made to either the General Medical Council (about individual doctors) or:

The Health Service Ombudsman in England

The Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman website contains detailed information on raising a complaint about any aspect of the NHS in England. There is also a leaflet explaining the procedure of bringing a complaint to the ombudsman.

Zero Tolerance

Our Doctors and Staff have the right to work in a safe and pleasant environment, and all patients have the right to be treated in a safe and relaxed environment too. We therefore operate a zero tolerance policy towards violence and verbal abuse whether expressed towards staff or other patients.

Where necessary we will issue verbal and written warnings to our patients about unacceptable conduct and occasionally, with reluctance, are forced to use the ultimate sanction of removal from our registered list.

We understand that health matters are often very anxiety provoking and stressful. With responsible behaviour from our patients, we will always seek to answer genuine complaints and problems as efficiently as we are able to do so.

Freedom of Information – Publication Scheme

The Freedom of Information Act 2000 obliges the practice to produce a Publication Scheme. A Publication Scheme is a guide to the ‘classes’ of information the practice intends to routinely make available. This scheme is available from the practice manager.

As a predominately publically-funded body Churchfields Surgery is open to Freedom of Information Requests and will respond in the statutory manner. Any requests should be directed to our practice manager, Mr Martin Rutter.

Equal Opportunities

We are an equal opportunities practice and affirm that we will not discriminate on the grounds of race, religion, gender or disability.