Under the Data Protection Act 1998, you are entitled to request information from your clinical records, or any other personal data that we hold about you.

If you request information from your records, you must make a Subject Access Request to the Practice Manager, who will respond within 21 days, and subject to payment of the appropriate fee (minimum of £10) and any applicable statutory exemption the information will be provided as soon as possible and in any case within 40 days.

The Act provides no entitlement to immediate access. Where all or part of your record is held in a non-electronic form, the maximum fee payable is £50. Online access to your electronic records and, under certain circumstances, access to inspect your non-electronic records is free of charge.

Provision of Information to Third Parties

The practice may share your personal information with other NHS organisations where this is lawful and appropriate for your health care. In other circumstances we may approach you for specific consent to release personal information to a third party. Information will not normally be released to other family members without written patient consent.

In some circumstances there are statutory or ethical obligations (for example, in connection with public health) for information to be disclosed to one or more third parties without your consent, however you may be consulted about these in advance.

All staff have access to some or all of your personal information and health record, but only to the extent required in relation to their roles, governed by employee contractual confidentiality agreements and by the legal requirements of the Data Protection Act 1998.

We understand that you may wish for a chaperone to be present during your consultation. Please ask at reception before seeing your clinician.

The clinician also has the right, in some circumstances, to insist on a chaperone being present.

Download a copy of our Children’s Privacy Policy.

Complaints Procedure

Listening – Responding – Improving

Kiltearn Medical Centre constantly strives to give patients the best possible care and attention. We regularly review our service and have specific case discussions.

Kiltearn Medical Centre operates its own complaints procedure, in line with NHS requirements and guidance on dealing with problems. Our policy meets all national criteria.

How to Complain

If you have any compliments, concerns or complaints about the services you have received from the practice, please let us know. We hope that most problems can be sorted out easily and quickly, hopefully as they arise, and with the person or persons concerned. If your problem cannot be sorted out this way, or you wish to see someone else about the issue, please contact us as soon as possible. Ideally, this should be within a matter of a few days from the incident, so that the issues are still fresh in the minds of all concerned.

If this is not possible, then NHS guidelines stipulate that we must receive details of any complaint within either:

• 12 months of the incident occurring, or
• within 12 months of you becoming aware of the problem

If you have a complaint, please write, in the first instance, to the Practice Manager, at the Surgery, and mark the letter “Private and Confidential” or in their absence the Assistant Practice Manager.

The complaints procedure will be explained to you, and we will make sure your concerns are dealt with promptly. Please be as specific as possible about your complaint.

What we will do

We will acknowledge receipt of your complaint within 3 working days, and aim to have looked into the areas of concern within 10 working days from the date we received the original notification of complaint from you. We will inform you if there are any circumstances, which may cause delay to this.

When we look at the complaint we will try to:

• Find out what happened, and what may have gone wrong
• Make it possible for you to discuss the problem with those concerned, if you wish to do so
• Make sure you receive an apology, if appropriate
• Identify any changes that can be made to prevent any similar problems in the future

If you complain on someone else’s behalf – please note that we will adhere strictly to rules of patient confidentiality. You will need to have permission to raise any issues, and we will need written confirmation of that permission from the complainant, in order to be able to discuss anything with you.

If you remain unsatisfied after this process

We hope that most complaints can be sorted out by 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. However this does not affect your right to approach the NHS England Commissioning board if you feel you cannot raise your complaint with us or you are dissatisfied with the way we are dealing with your complaint.

Enquiries and complaints about primary care and specialist healthcare commissioned by NHS England should be directed to NHS England at [email protected] or by telephone on 03003 112233.

www.england.nhs.uk/contact-us/complaint

Enquiries and complaints about primary care and specialist healthcare commissioned by Cheshire Clinical Commissioning Group should be directed to NHS Cheshire CCG

[email protected]

Tel: 0800 132996

If you are dissatisfied with this response, then you have the right to refer your complaint to the Health Service Ombudsman, by writing to Health Service Ombudsman, Millbank Tower, Millbank, London SW1P 4QP. They can also be contacted on helpline 0345 015 4033, http://www.ombudsman.org.uk/ or by email: [email protected]. They would require a clear statement of what issues remained outstanding.

However, before considering taking this step, we hope you would let us know what aspect of the complaint has not been dealt with satisfactorily and provide an opportunity for us to consider whether there is anything further that could be done locally to resolve matters.

Help us get it right

We constantly try to improve the service we offer.

Please let us know when you think we have done something well or if you have any suggestions as to how we can do something better.

NHS England require that the net earnings of doctors engaged in the practice is publicised and the required disclosure is shown below.

However, it should be noted that the prescribed method for 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 to for any judgement about GP earnings, nor to make any comparisons with other practices.

The average earnings for GPs working in Kiltearn Medical Centre in the last financial year ending in 2022/23 was £76,062 before taxation and National Insurance.

This is for 2 full time GPs, 6 part time GPs and 3 locum GPs who worked in the practice for more than 6 months.

The Practice has a strict protocol for those patients who arrive late for their appointments. Please ask at reception to view the policy.

This practice is one of over 600 practices in England contributing pseudonymised data for national research and surveillance.

These data enable continuous monitoring of infections and diseases in the community and is used in ethically approved research. The RCGP RSC is the main source of information for Public Health England (PHE) and helps with prediction and management of flu outbreaks and pandemics.

Providing pseudonymised data does not affect patients, their care or privacy, however if you no longer wish to allow your information to be used, please speak to the Research Team at Kiltearn Medical Centre 01270 610200 or email: [email protected]

We are a no-smoking organisation and smoking is not permitted anywhere within our building nor immediately in front of the entrance hall.

Download our Patient Privacy Policy.

Giving another person access to your GP online services Booklet

Protecting your GP online record Booklet