Practice Charter

RIGHTS AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF PATIENTS

You can help us to help you by:
• Doing everything you can to keep appointments and letting us know as soon as possible if you need to change or cancel an appointment.
• Asking for night visits only when you feel it is truly necessary.
• Requesting home visits only when the patient is too ill to attend surgery.
• Letting us know if you change your name, address or telephone number.
• Asking questions if you are unsure about any treatment or advice given to you.

VIOLENCE AND ABUSE

We believe that patients have the right to be treated politely, without discrimination and in confidence. In return we expect patients to treat our staff courteously. Verbal abuse will not be tolerated. The police will be called to assist in the event of displays of violent behaviour, the patient will be removed from the practice list, and the Primary Care Trust notified.

COMPLAINTS PROCEDURE

We always try to give the best service possible, but there may be times when you feel this has not happened. If you have a complaint about the service we provide for you, ask t reception for copy of our comments, complaints and suggestions leaflet.

Confidentiality

When we treat you we need information so that you can receive proper care and treatment. We need to keep this information because it may be needed when you are treated again.

To protect patient confidentiality you should be aware that everyone working in the NHS has a legal duty to keep information about patients confidential.

There are times when information about patients needs to be share with other departments within the NHS or partner organisations for the benefit of the patient.

Anyone who receives information from us is also under a legal duty to keep it confidential.

Access to information is strictly restricted to essential users, ie doctors, nurses and to a limited extent to administration on a “need to know” basis.

PATIENT INFORMATION

The staff at this practice record information about you and your health so that you can receive the right care and treatment. We need to record this information, together with the details of the care you receive, because it may be needed if we see you again.

We may use some of this information for other reasons, for example, to help us to protect the health of the general public generally, to plan for the future, to train staff and to carry out medical and other health research for the benefit of everyone.

We are currently involved in two research studies for which we provide anonymised information from patients’ notes. You cannot be indentified in any way from this information as none of you personal details are given to researchers. Individual patients’ records are added into a much larger anonymous database, containing records from millions of patients across the UK. This information is used by researchers outside this practice. The databases to which we contribute anonymised records are known as The Health Improvement Network (THIN) and General Practice Research Data Base (GPRD).

These databases are managed by a company outside the NHS which does not have access to your personal details, only to anonymous media records. The data is used for research into such topics as drug safety, disease patterns, prescribing patterns, health economics and public health. Many of these studies provide useful information to medical staff on diseases, the use of drugs or outcomes of disease or treatments.

These studies may be performed by academic researchers or commercial companies amongst others.
However, no researcher has access to your full details such as your name and address, initials or your full date of birth. The researchers are not given information on the GP nor the practice name, address or postcode.

If you would like to opt out of this data collection scheme, please let your doctor know and no data from your records will be collected or used in research . This will not affect your care in any way.

If anything to do with the research would require that you provide additional information about yourself, you will be contacted to see if you are willing to take part; you will not be identified in any published results.

Note that you have a right of access to your health records. If at any time you would like to know more, or have any concerns about how we use your information, you can speak to Karen Hermans, Practice Manager – telephone number: 0844 477 3001.

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 reception.