Complaints Procedure

Complaints procedure

We want to ensure you receive a reliable, safe and consistent service from us. So, if you have any concerns at all, we’d love to hear about them. When you raise a concern, it allows us to improve and make sure we’re giving you the best service possible.

How to raise a concern or complaint:

We take complaints very seriously, and aim to deal with issues promptly and in a caring and sensitive way. If we make a mistake, we learn from it and make sure it will not happen again. You will not be treated any differently as a result of making a complaint, and all records of complaints are kept confidentially and separately from your treatment file.In your complaint, you should include how you’d like us to respond to you. We can send you a secure message to your online account, email address, a letter to your home, call you, or discuss your complaint face to face.

We guarantee the security of all messages sent through your online account. However, if you would prefer us to respond using a different method, such as post, make sure you’re comfortable with how secure the option is.We do everything possible to address any complaints we receive, but it can be more difficult for us to resolve issues raised more than 6 months after the problem occurred.

What to expect from us

We’ll let you know we’ve received your complaint within 3 working days. Your complaint will then be given to the most appropriate Patient Care manager to investigate. Once the investigation is complete the Patient Care manager will send you a full response within 30 working days. If your case requires more time, they will update you on the investigation’s progress and propose a new deadline for their response. If you’re unhappy with the investigation and/or response, let the Patient Care manager dealing with your complaint know and it will be passed to a member of the senior management team.

You’re welcome to do this at any time, but we cannot guarantee that we’ll be able to resolve the complaint if it’s more than 6 months after your initial response from us. Once the senior management team member has been given your complaint, they’ll let you know they’ve received it within 3 working days, and send an official response within 30 working days. You’ll receive a full response or an update on the investigation’s progress with a new proposed deadline of response.

Complaining on behalf of someone else

In order to complain on behalf of someone else, you’ll need the patient’s written consent. This is because all of our patients’ medical records are entirely confidential. The patient will need to send a signed letter (via post or as a scanned document attached to an email) that confirms their consent for the complaint to be investigated. We’ll match the signature on the letter to that on the copy of the patient’s ID held by us.

Taking your complaint further

If you still feel that we’ve been unable to resolve your complaint then we’ll invite you to contact the Independent Sector Complaints Adjudication Service (ISCAS). You can contact them in the following ways:

You may also wish to share your experience with the Care Quality Commission (CQC). The CQC cannot investigate complaints concerning independent healthcare or social-care services, but they may still want to hear from you so that they can use this information when inspecting us in the future..