Practice Policies

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.

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.

Complaints

Should you wish to express a grievance we would encourage you consider whether or not there is cause for complaint.  We would want to resolve the matter as swiftly as possible and encourage you to view  the practice procedure for complaints before completing the complaint form. 

Please review the Practice Complaints Procedure  here. 

Patient Complaint Form Forms should be returned by hand to the Reception Desk, in writing to the Practice Manager or email to frimleyicb.adminfphg@nhs.net 

Further information can be found on the link below to the advocacy service 

SILC Independent Health Complaints Advocacy Service  

Most of us use the NHS at some point in our lives and many of us use these services regularly. Whilst the NHS works hard to make sure that people are satisfied with the services sometimes things do go wrong. The NHS complaints procedure is in place to make sure that issues are resolved at a local level. 

We understand that you might need support to make a complaint about an NHS Service. SILC are able to provide free, confidential and independent support and assistance to people who live in Surrey. 

Following fact sheets provided by Healthwatch Surrey 

Fast Fact 1 – Raising your complaint

Fast Fact 2 – Local Resolution Meetings 

Fast Fact 3 – The Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman 
 

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.