Complaints

Comments and Complaints

Our aim is for all patients to be pleased with their experience of our services. We take all comments and complaints very seriously in our practice and we are greatly committed to continuously improving our standards and services, for you, our patients.

Comments are always welcomed and we greatly appreciate receiving them, good or bad. We are happy to receive comments in any form; verbal, written, electronic and we even have a suggestion box located next to our self checking-in service, so that they can also be made anonymously.

Practice Complaints Procedure

If you have a complaint or concern about the service that you have received from the dentists or any of the staff working in this practice, please let us know. We operate a practice complaints procedure as part of an NHS system for dealing with complaints.

How to Complain

We hope that most problems can be sorted out easily and quickly, often at the time they arise and with the person concerned. If your problem cannot be sorted out in this way and you wish to make a complaint, we would like you to let us know as soon as possible, if this is not possible to do that, please let us have details of your complaint:

• within 6 months of the incident that caused the problem; or
• within 6 months of discovering that you have a problem, provided this is within 12 months of the incident.

Complaints should be addressed in writing to the Practice Manager or to any of the dentists to make arrangements to discuss your concerns. If this is not possible please advise one of our reception team who would be happy to take your details and provide them to our Practice Manager.

What we Shall do

We shall acknowledge your complaint within three working days and aim to have looked into your complaint within twenty working days of the date when you raised it with us. We shall then be in a position to offer you an explanation, or a meeting with those involved.

Complaining on behalf of someone else

Please note that we keep strictly to the rules of confidentiality. If you are complaining on behalf of someone else, we have to know that you have permission to do so. A note signed by the person concerned will be needed, unless they are incapable (because of physical or mental illness) of providing this.

Further Action Available

We hope that if you have a problem you will use our practice complaints procedure. We believe this will provide the best chance of putting right whatever has gone wrong and an opportunity to improve our practice.

If, however, you feel nothing further can be achieved by direct discussion then you can contact with NHS complaints team directly.

By post to:

NHS England
PO Box 16738
Redditch
B97 9PT

By email to: england.contactus@nhs.net

If you are making a complaint please state: ‘For the attention of the complaints team’ in the subject line.

By telephone: 0300 311 22 33

If this should fail, reference can then be made to the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman.

After Local Resolution

If you are not satisfied after your complaint has been investigated, you have the right to ask the Parliamentary and Health Service
Ombudsman to review your case.

The Ombudsman will examine the information about how your complaint has been investigated at the local resolution stage and will advise you whether your case is suitable for further
investigation.

Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman, 11th Floor, Millbank Tower, London SW1P 4QP
Tel: 0845 015 4033
Fax: 020 7217 4066
Text Tel: 020 7217 4066
www.ombudsman.org.uk