Our Commitment To You

You will be treated with courtesy by all members of staff.

You will receive care from the most appropriate and suitably qualified member of staff.

Access to your medical records will be limited to the staff providing care for you.

A non-urgent appointment will be available to you within three working days under normal circumstances.

If you require an urgent appointment you will be seen on the same day. If all appointments have already been taken arrangements will be made to fit you in to the surgery that is running or, if there is no surgery running, the next surgery (in these circumstances some waiting may be unavoidable).

You may request an appointment with the doctor of your choice. This will be arranged for you as soon as possible depending on the availability of the doctor concerned.

Our aim is to see you on time. You will be informed of the reason for any substantial delay affecting your own appointment time.

Except in exceptional circumstances all daytime home visits will be undertaken by the doctors of this practice.

Repeat prescriptions, once authorised by one of the doctors, may be requested online, in person or by post (enclosing a s.a.e. if you wish). Prescriptions will be ready for collection (or posted out) 48 hours later.

Suggestions, comments and complaints will be dealt with promptly and confidentially.

Your Commitment To Us

Appointment Cancellation
If you know you cannot make an appointment please tell us as soon as you can. We can re-arrange your appointment if you wish and fit someone else in on your cancellation.

Home Visits
Please remember that home visits are for those patients who are too sick or too frail to come to the surgery. Unnecessary home visits waste valuable medical time. Requests for visits can be made by phone or by sending a fully informed messenger to the surgery and should be made before 10.00 a.m. wherever possible.

Evening, Night and Weekend Visits
Please confine out of hours calls to requests for visits for urgent medical conditions only. The doctor you are calling will have worked that day and will have to work the following day.

Changes of Name, Address and Telephone No.
If you change your circumstances please tell us so that we can update our records. This makes it easy for us to contact you should the need arise.

Telephoning the Surgery
For routine telephone calls to the surgery please ring after 11.00 am. as the lines are usually very busy up till then.

Comments and Suggestions
Please let us know about the service you receive. It will help us to improve our service to you and to others. If you have any comments, suggestions or complaints please contact our Practice Manager or one of the doctors.

Complaints
If you are dissatisfied with the Practice in any way or if you have a complaint, please write to our Practice Manager. We will take your comments seriously and we will do our best to resolve the problem as soon as possible.

Practice Complaints Procedure

Introduction
We operate a Practice Complaints Procedure as part of the NHS system for dealing with complaints. Our Complaints System meets 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) because this will enable us to establish what happened more easily.

Generally, it is nor possible to investigate a complaint unless it is made within 6 months of the incident that caused the problem; or within 6 months of discovering that you have a problem, providing this is within 12 months of the incident.

To make a complaint please complete a Patient Complaint Form (available from reception).

Complaints should be addressed to our Complaints Officer who is our Practice Manager. Alternatively, you may ask for an appointment with our Manager order to discuss your concerns. The complaints procedure will be explained to your concerns will be dealt with promptly.

It will be a great help if you are as specific as possible about your complaint.

What we will do
Under normal circumstances, we shall acknowledge your complaint within two working days and aim to have looked into your complaint within ten working days of the date when 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 complain 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 do this.

• Make sure you receive an apology, where it is appropriate.

• Identify what we can do to make sure the problem doesn't’t 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.

The person on behalf of whom the complaint is being made will need to sign the declaration at the bottom of our complaint form.

Complaining to the NHS
We hope that, if you have a problem, you will use our Practice Complaints Procedure. We believe this will give us 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 NHS Merseyside Area Team, if you feel you cannot raise your complaint with us or you are dissatisfied with the result of our investigation. You should contact the PCT complaints manager by writing to:

Patient Relations Manager
Knowsley Primary Care Trust
Nutgrove Villa, Westmorland Road,
Huyton, Liverpool,
Merseyside, L36 6GA

Our Chaperone Policy 

 If you need a Chaperone for an intimate examination you can bring a family member or friend or we will organise one for you so long as we know that is your need. Otherwise we can always put off your examination until a chaperone is available.

Our full chaperone policy is available from our receptionist.