Complaints

Practice Complaints Policy
Patient feedback is important to us as it helps us to improve the service we provide to patients. We take patient complaints seriously and will address any concerns by carrying out a thorough investigation into the matter.

How do I make a complaint?
If you wish to complain please contact Catherine Eyre, Reception Manager on 0115 883 2626, who will deal with your concerns appropriately. If you wish to submit a written complaint, our complaints procedure, including a complaints form can be viewed by clicking here. Please note; completed patient complaint forms should be returned to the Practice directly for investigation.

Alternatively, you may send a written letter to:
F.A.O. The Operations Manager
Castle Healthcare Practice,
Embankment Primary Care Centre,
50-60 Wilford Lane,
West Bridgford,
Nottingham,
NG2 7SD

If you are complaining on behalf of someone else, the Practice needs to know that you have their permission to do so.

What Happens Next?
We will endeavour to acknowledge your complaint within 5 working days and aim to have looked into your complaint within 14 days of the date when you raised it with us.  Some complaints may take longer to address but you will be informed of a response time.  If this cannot be met, the Practice will keep you informed.

Please be assured making a complaint will not adversely affect your ongoing healthcare at the Practice.  We will deal with you fairly, compassionately and will endeavour to resolve the situation to a satisfactory conclusion.

Wherever possible, we aim to learn from complaints and take action to avoid similar occurrences.

Is there a time limit?
Within 12 months of the incident that caused the problem or within 12 months from when the complaint comes to your notice.

Please remember, the sooner you provide the Practice with the information, the easier it will be to investigate the facts.

How do I complain to someone Independent if I don’t feel I can contact the Practice directly or if I am dissatisfied with the outcome?
We believe that our internal policy will give us the best chance of putting right whatever has gone wrong. However, this does not affect your right to approach the following organisations if you feel you cannot raise your complaint with us or if you are dissatisfied with the result of our investigation.

Patient Advice and Liaison Service (PALS):
Telephone – 0800 183 0204
Email – nuhnt.PALS@nhs.net
Website – https://www.nuh.nhs.uk/pals/
Address –
NUH NHS Trust c/o PALS,
Freepost,
NEA 14614,
Nottingham,
NG7 1BR

Nottingham and Nottinghamshire Integrated Care Board:
Telephone – 0115 883 9570
Email – nnicb-nn.patientexperience@nhs.net
Website – www.notts.icb.nhs.uk
Address –
Patient Experience Team,
Sir John Robinson House,
Sir John Robinson Way,
Arnold,
Nottingham,
NG5 6DA

Independent Complaints and Advocacy Service (ICAS):
Telephone – 0300 456 2370
Website – www.pohwer.net

The Parliamentary Service Ombudsman:
Telephone – 0345 015 4033
Website – www.ombudsman.org.uk

Care Quality Commission (CQC):
Telephone – 03000 616 161
Website – www.cqc.org.uk

Other useful information

NHS – Feedback and complaints about NHS services

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 submitted via a signed request by the patient, for the attention of the Practice Secretaries. These requests may be subject to an administration charge. No information will be released without patient consent unless we are legally obliged to do so.

For information on how to access your digital health record, visit: NHS – View your GP health record

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 Business Manager.

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 clinical staff.

DocMail Policy

Castle Healthcare Practice uses a data processing company called DocMail to handle some mailings to patients. Typically this is for bulk mailings such as the invitations to attend the flu clinics where it is difficult to accommodate the administrative work involved without affecting our ability to serve patients. This is permissible under guidance from both the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) and the Department of Health (DoH) subject to the provisions of the Data Protection Act

Please find below some more information about DocMail and how we work with them to ensure that we protect our patients’ personal data at all times.

What is DocMail

DocMail is provided by CFH Total Document management Ltd a secure print and mailing company who provide print and mailing services for Local Government, GPs, Dentists, Medical practices, Schools, Exam Boards and Banks etc. throughout the UK.

The system can be found online at http://www.docmail.co.uk/ and requires a secure user name and password for us to log on and upload our letters and address lists to create the printed output for despatch to Royal Mail. The system allows us to upload a letter template and mailing data for the patients we want to write to via a secure web portal.

The Data Protection Act (DPA) (1998)

Castle Healthcare Practice and DocMail are both fully compliant with the Data Protection Act.

The Information Commissioners Office issued guidance in February 2012 for organisations that outsource some of its data processing to a third party. The Data Protection Act allows outsourcing to take place but stipulates certain conditions that must be met for it to be compliant.

An organisation that processes personal data is required to handle personal data in accordance with the data protection principles. A data controller may choose to use another organisation to process personal data on its behalf – a data processor.

The data controller remains responsible for ensuring its processing complies with the DPA, whether it processes in-house or engages a data processor.

Where a data processor is used the data controller must ensure that suitable security arrangements are in place in order to comply with the seventh data protection principle.

Further extracts from the guidance are reproduced below and the entire document is available on the ICO website.

Castle Healthcare Practice has strictly adhered to this guidance in setting up the partnership with DocMail.

  • Castle Healthcare Practice remains the data controller and as such has the responsibility for ensuring compliance with the provisions of the Act. We are not able to pass on those responsibilities to DocMail whose role is that of a data processor.
  • There is a written contract between Castle Healthcare Practice and CFH – Total Document management Ltd in addition to the standard terms of business that are published on the DocMail website.
  • That contract stipulates that DocMail can only act in accordance with instructions from Castle Healthcare Practice i.e. they can only print and mail letters in accordance with data provided by us. They are not able to do anything else with that data.
  • The contract also creates a legal requirement for DocMail to act in accordance with the seventh principle of the Data Protection Act.
  • The Partners of Castle Healthcare Practice have satisfied themselves that DocMail have provided sufficient guarantees in respect of the technical and organisational security measures governing the processing to be carried out.
  • The partners have taken, and will continue to take, reasonable steps to ensure that DocMail are compliant with these security measures.
  • No data will pass outside of the European Union

Other Approvals

DocMail is also approved by the following:

  • Government Procurement Service for Hybrid Mail – which allows all government organisations to use DocMail.
  • Health Trust EuropeOutgoing Mail Solutions – which includes University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS trust who visited our premises last week to carry out a site audit.
  • 67 Primary Care Trusts for Medical Studies have approved the use of DocMail. 500,000 medical studies packs were sent in 2011 across 200 surgeries
  • Caldicott Guardian across a number areas have approved the use of DocMail when asked
  • Ethics Committees have approved the use of DocMail by surgeries for use in medical studies

Accreditations & Security Policies

In addition to the credentials listed above, we have been supplied with DocMail’s Corporate Policies and certifications as detailed below:

  • ISO 27001:2005 Information Security management System Certificate
  • CFH Site Security Policy
  • CFH Information Technology Security Policy
  • Information Security Policy

We have permission from DocMail to allow any patient of Castle Healthcare Practice to view them on request. Please ask at reception if you wish to do this.

Process

The data file provided to DocMail will only contain enough data to enable them to fulfil the contract. This means that it will include name and address details and, where appropriate, the date and time of an appointment as well as the name of the clinician you will be seeing or the name of a clinic you will be attending eg Flu Clinic or NHS Health Check. We will of course exercise the same discretion in writing the letters as we would if we were printing and posting them at the surgery.

The letters will be delivered to your address by Royal Mail in the normal way. The letters will carry the DocMail logo and the return address on the reverse side. This address does not identify the letter as having come from a doctor’s surgery.

DocMail delete the personal data 28 days after the mailing.

If you have any questions or require further information about this please ask to speak to the Operations Manager.

GP Earnings

2021/2022 Publication of GP Net Earnings

All GP Practices are required to declare the mean earnings for GPs working to deliver NHS services to patients at each Practice.

The mean pay for GPs working in Castle Healthcare Practice in the last financial year was £67,963.72 before Tax and National Insurance.  This is based on 14 GPs, of which 2 are full time and 12 were part time and nil locums GP’s worked in the Practice for more than a 6 month period.

It should be noted that the prescribed method for calculating earnings is potentially misleading, because it does not take into account of time each GP spends working in the practice over the year.  This information should not be used to form any judgement about GP earnings or to make any comparison with any other Practice.