Practice Policies & Patient Information
Confidentiality
You can be assured that anything you discuss with any member of the surgery staff, whether doctor, nurse or receptionist, will remain confidential. Even if you are under 16, nothing will be said to anyone, including parents, other family members, care workers or teachers, without your permission. The only reason why we might want to consider passing on confidential information without your permission would be to protect either you or someone else from serious harm. In this situation, we would always try to discuss this with you first.
If you have any worries or queries about confidentiality, please ask a member of staff.
Data Protection
We need to hold personal information about you on our computer systems and in paper records to help us to look after your health needs and your doctor is responsible for their accuracy and safe-keeping. Please help to keep your record up to date by informing us of any changes to your circumstances.
Doctors and staff in the practice have access to your medical records to enable them to do their jobs. From time to time information may be shared with others involved in your care if it is necessary. Anyone with access to your record is properly trained in confidentiality issues and is governed by both legal and contractual duty to keep your details private.
All information about you is held securely and appropriate safeguards are in place to prevent accidental loss.
In some circumstances we may be required by law to release your details to statutory or other official bodies, for example if a court order is presented, or in the case of public health issues. In other circumstances you may be required to give written consent before information is released – such as for medical reports for insurance, solicitors etc.
To ensure your privacy, we will not disclose information over the telephone or fax unless we are sure that we are talking to you. Information will not be disclosed to family, friends or spouses unless we have prior written consent and we do not leave messages with others.
You have a right to see your records if you wish. Please ask at reception if you would like further details about our patient information leaflet. An appointment may be required. In some circumstances a fee may be payable.
GDPR
General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a new law that determines how your personal data is processed and kept safe, and the legal rights that you have in relation to your own data.
Opting out of sharing your confidential patient information
You can decide if health and care information that could identify you is used to improve everyone’s health and care, or only used for your own health and care. If you want your health and care information to be included in sets of data used to improve everyone’s health and care, you don’t need to do anything. Click here for more information.
GP Earnings
The average pay for GPs working in The Grange Surgery in the last financial year was £92,062 before tax and National Insurance. This is for 1 full time GP and 5 part time GPs who worked in the practice for six months or more.
“NHS England require that the net earnings of doctors engaged in the practice is publicised by 31 March 2024 at the latest. However, it should be noted that the prescribed method of calculating earnings is potentially misleading because it takes no account of how much time doctors spend working in the practice and should not be used for any judgement about GP earnings, nor to make any comparisons with other practices
IT Policy
This practice is committed to preserving, as far as is practical, the security of data used by our information systems. This means that we will take all reasonable actions to;
Maintain the Confidentiality of all data within the practice by:
- Ensuring that only authorised persons can gain access to our systems
- Not disclosing information to anyone who has no right to see it
Maintain the integrity of all data within the practice by:
- Taking care over input
- Ensuring that all changes are reported and monitored
- Checking that the correct record is on the screen before updating
- Reporting all apparent errors and ensuring that they are resolved
Maintain the availability of all data by:
- Ensuring that all equipment is protected from intruders
- Ensuring that backups are taken at regular, predetermined intervals
- Ensuring that contingency is provided for possible failure or equipment theft and that any such contingency plans are tested and kept up to date
Additionally we will take all reasonable measures to comply with our legal responsibilities under:
Named Accountable GP
The Grange Surgery is required to allocate a named accountable GP to all its patients, including children.
The patient’s allocated named accountable GP is responsible for the co-ordination of all appropriate services required and ensures they are delivered where required (based on the clinical judgement of the named accountable GP). This is largely a role of oversight, with the requirements being introduced to reassure patients they have one GP within the practice who is responsible for ensuring this work is carried out on their behalf.
However, overall responsibility for patient care has not changed and The Grange Surgery is still ΄practice based΄. A patient can still request, or may be allocated, an appointment with another doctor or nurse at The Grange Surgery. The Centre maintains electronic medical records allowing all clinicians access to up to date information about each patient.
Next time you have an appointment at the surgery, please ask the doctor/nurse to advise your Named Accountable GP. New patients registering with The Grange Surgery will be informed of their Named Accountable GP as part of the registration process.
Personal Data
The following IT systems are in use at the practice:
- Referral Management (using NHS numbers in referrals)
- Electronic Appointment Booking (the facility to book routine appointments online and, similarly, to cancel appointments)
- Online requests of repeat prescriptions
- Summary Care Record (uploading details of your current medication and allergies to the national “spine” so that these are available for doctors involved in your care elsewhere)
- GP to GP transfers (the electronic transfer of records from practice to practice when you re-register)
- Patient Access (the facility to view your medical records online)
If you are not already registered for Patient Access and would like to be please complete our online form.
If you would like access to your medical records enabled or would like to opt out of the local or national summary care record, please contact reception.
Privacy Notice
We understand how important it is to keep your personal information safe and secure and we take this very seriously. We have taken steps to make sure your personal information is looked after in the best possible way. We review our procedures regularly. Please read this privacy notice (‘Privacy Notice’) carefully, as it contains important information about how we use the personal and healthcare information we collect on your behalf.
Proxy User Access
Please be advised that we are now able to offer a service for patients whereby they can have access to another person’s online services, with consent if needed.
For The Grange Surgery we have 3 options
- For patients between 1 and 13 (For parents/carers of young children)
- For patients between 13 and 16 (If deemed competent a 13 year old can have their own access) for this age group, where consent is given by the patient, it will be the registered doctor’s decision for the proxy user access to be given.
- For patients 16+ (For carers/family members of patients 16 and above who may not be competent or need help)
Please click on the link below to find out more information and fill in the age appropriate form and return it to the surgery with the relevant identity documentation.
PLEASE NOTE YOU WILL NEED TO HAVE YOUR OWN ACTIVE PATIENT ACCESS ACCOUNT IN ORDER TO BE A PROXY USER FOR ANY AGE GROUP.
For more information please download this guide.
Suggestions & Complaints
Want to make a complaint?
If you have a complaint or concern about the service you have received from the doctors or any of the staff working in this practice, please let us know. We operate a practice complaints procedure as part of the NHS system for dealing with complaints.
How to complain?
We hope that most problems can be solved and addressed quickly, often at the time they arise and with the person concerned. If your problem cannot be addressed 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 as this will enable us to review the situation more easily. You may still complain up to 12 months after the incident occurs or even longer if there are good reasons for not complaining earlier, and provided it is still possible to investigate matters effectively and fairly.
Complaints should be addressed to the Practice Manager. Alternatively you may ask for an appointment with the Practice Manager in order to discuss your concerns. They will explain the complaints procedure to you and will make sure that your concerns are dealt with promptly. Please help by being as specific as possible about your complaint.
Practice Manager/Partner responsible for complaints:
Mrs Julieanne Page
The Grange Surgery
The Causeway
Petersfield
Hampshire
GU34 4JR
Tel: 01730 267722
Email: [email protected]
Alternatively you could raise a complaint with NHS England if you do not feel able to raise a complaint directly with us. They can be contacted via telephone on: 0300 311 2233 or by email: [email protected]
What do we do?
We shall acknowledge your written complaint within three working days and aim to have looked into your complaint within a reasonable timeframe. We should then be in a position to offer you an explanation, or a meeting with the people involved. We shall aim to find out what happened and what went wrong and to identify what we can do to make sure the problem does not happen again. If there is likely to be a delay, we will tell you the reasons and we will keep you informed of our progress.
We will inform you in writing of the outcome of our investigations.
Although we hope you will feel able to contact the practice first, if you prefer you can make your complaint direct to VoiceAbility, Unit 1, The Old Granary, Westwick, Oakington, Cambridge, CBH24 3AR, email address: [email protected]. Tel: 01223 555800. This service can support you with advice, information and guidance. More information can be found on the VoiceAbility website: www.voiceability.org.
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 will need their signed consent to respond to you about the issue, unless they are medically incapable of providing this.
If you are still dissatisfied:
We hope that we will be able to resolve any problems satisfactorily using the above procedure. However, if you are dissatisfied with the outcome of the investigation you have the right to approach the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman, Millbank Tower, London SW1P 4QP, Tel: 0345 015 4033, or email: [email protected].
Want to make a suggestion?
Your comments and suggestions are important to us, please click on the link below and complete the form to send them to us. Please only use this form for comments about the practice and suggestions as to how we can improve our service to you.
Medical matters and official complaints cannot be dealt with via this form. If you have a query regarding a medical matter please telephone reception to make and appointment to see the appropriate person.
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.