Confidentiality & Medical Records
The practice complies with 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 anonymised patient information will also be used at local and national level to help the Health Board and Government plan services e.g. for diabetic care.
If you do not wish anonymous information about you to be used in such a way, please let us know.
Reception and administration staff require access to your medical records in order to do their jobs. These members of staff are bound by the same rules of confidentiality as the medical staff.
Freedom of Information
Information about the General Practioners and the practice required for disclosure under this act can be made available to the public. All requests for such information should be made to the practice manager.
GDPR Policy
Access to Records
In accordance with the Data Protection Act 1998 and Access to Health Records Act, patients may request to see their medical records. Such requests should be made through the practice manager and may be subject to an administration charge. No information will be released without the patient consent unless we are legally obliged to do so.
![download our emis access policy](http://www.westburymedicalcentre.nhs.uk/website/M82013/files/Policy for EMIS ACCESS (5).docx)
Complaints & Compliments
If you have a compliment,complaint or a concern about the service you have received from the doctors,nurses or any of the staff working here please let us know. We operate a practice complaints procedure as part of the NHS wide system for dealing with complaints. Our system meets the national criteria.
How To Complain
We hope that most problems can be sorted easily and quickly, 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 wold like you to let us know as soon as possible, ideally on the day. This is because the sooner we know about the problem, the easier it will be for us to establish what happened. In any event, please let us have details of your complaint.
Compliments or complaints should be addressed to Dr Katy Lewis or Mrs Helen Bowkett. It will be a great help if you are as specific as possible about your complaint.
What we will Do
We will pass on any compliments to the member of staff involved and also make other staff aware.
We will acknowledge your complaint within two working days and aim to have looked in to your complaint within ten 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:
Find out what went wrong
Make it possible for you to discuss the problem with those concerned, if you would like this
Make sure you receive an apology, where this is apropiate
Identify what we can do to make sure the problem does not happen again
Complaining On Behalf Of Someone Else
If you are complaining on behalf of someone else,we have to know that you have their permission to do so. A letter signed by the person concerned will be needed to authorize you to complain on their behalf.
PALS (Patient Advice and Liaison Service)
We hope that if you have a problem you will use our practice complaint procedure. We believe this will give us the best chance of putting right whatever has gone wrong and an opportunity to improve our practice.
If for any reason you feel that the practice complaints procedure has not resolved your problem then another step is to contact PALS on Tel:- 0800 030 4563 or written complaints can be made to Complaints Department, Shropshire CCg, Somerby Suite, William Farr House, Mytton Oak Road, Shrewsbury, SY3 8XL
![Customer service form](/images/comments.jpg)
Violence Policy
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 will 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.