If you have a compliment, complaint or a concern about the service you have received from the doctors, nurses or any of the staff working here please let us know. We operate a practice complaints procedure as part of the NHS wide system for dealing with complaints. Our system meets the national criteria.

How To Complain

We hope that most problems can be sorted easily and quickly, 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, ideally on the day. This is because the sooner we know about the problem, the easier it will be for us to establish what happened. In any event, please let us have details of your complaint.

Compliments or complaints should be addressed to Dr Katy Lewis or Mrs Helen Bowkett. It will be a great help if you are as specific as possible about your complaint.

What we will Do

We will pass on any compliments to the member of staff involved and also make other staff aware.

We will acknowledge your complaint within two working days and aim to have looked in to your complaint within ten working days of the date you raised it with us. We shall then be in a position to offer you an explanation, or a meeting with the people involved.

When we look into your complaint we shall:

• Find out what went wrong
• Make it possible for you to discuss the problem with those concerned, if you would like this
• Make sure you receive an apology, where this is appropriate
• Identify what we can do to make sure the problem does not happen again

Complaining On Behalf Of Someone Else

If you are complaining on behalf of someone else, we have to know that you have their permission to do so. A letter signed by the person concerned will be needed to authorize you to complain on their behalf.

PALS (Patient Advice and Liaison Service)

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

If for any reason you feel that the practice complaints procedure has not resolved your problem then another step is to contact PALS on Tel: 0800 030 4563 or written complaints can be made to Complaints Department, Shropshire CCg, Somerby Suite, William Farr House, Mytton Oak Road, Shrewsbury, SY3 8XL.

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.

Please view our GDPR Policy here.

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.

Your Data Matters to the NHS

Information about your health and care helps us to improve your individual care, speed up diagnosis, plan your local services and research new treatments. The NHS is committed to keeping patient information safe and always being clear about how it is used.

Please view the National Data Opt Out information PowerPoint here.

How your data is used

Information about your individual care such as treatment and diagnoses is collected about you whenever you use health and care services. It is also used to help us and other organisations for research and planning such as research into new treatments, deciding where to put GP clinics and planning for the number of doctors and nurses in your local hospital. It is only used in this way when there is a clear legal basis to use the information to help improve health and care for you, your family and future generations.

Wherever possible we try to use data that does not identify you, but sometimes it is necessary to use your confidential patient information.

You have a choice

You do not need to do anything if you are happy about how your information is used. If you do not want your confidential patient information to be used for research and planning, you can choose to opt out securely online or through a telephone service. You can change your mind about your choice at any time.

Will choosing this opt-out affect your care and treatment?

No, choosing to opt out will not affect how information is used to support your care and treatment. You will still be invited for screening services, such as screenings for bowel cancer.

What do you need to do?

If you are happy for your confidential patient information to be used for research and planning, you do not need to do anything.

To find out more about the benefits of data sharing, how data is protected, or to make/change your opt-out choice visit www.nhs.uk/your-nhs-data-matters.

Download a copy of the patient leaflet here.

Westbury is a long established medical practice that is committed to preserve and enhance the care for all our patients.

We Undertake To:

• Treat you with respect and courtesy at all times
• Provide you with advice and treatment in a timely manner
• Help you to make decisions about your health by treating you as an equal
• Discuss what treatment is available and refer you on to other experts where necessary
• Act as your advocate and guide through health and social services
• Maintain confidentiality in what we discuss and the records we keep on your behalf
• Keep up to date with developments in health care by continuing to learn

In Return We Ask You To:

• Keep your appointments or let us know as soon as possible if you can’t attend
• Only use the Out of Hours services for urgent conditions which can’t wait until the next day or over the weekend
• Be nice to our staff. They do their best for you and respond very well to “please” and “thankyou”
• Let us know if you have any cause for complaints as soon as possible
• We welcome suggestions
• Let us know when we have done well

GP and Staff Training

All members of the practice team do receive regular training and appropriate updating through Continuous Professional/Personal Development.

From summer 2021, everyone’s health and social care records in Shopshire, Telford and Wrekin have been available on the new integrated care record ‘One Health and Care’.

Completely confidential and secure, it’s designed to help doctors, nurses and other registered health and social care professionals directly involved in a patient or client’s care to make better, safer decisions.

The information that they will be able to see includes:

• Name, date of birth, sex, address, telephone number, NHS number
• The name of their GP Practice and GP
• Medications, allergies, ongoing and historic conditions, immunisations and diagnoses
• Test results, hospital referrals, admissions, discharges, and clinics attended
• Social and mental health information and care plans

Sensitive information such as attendance at sexual health clinics, fertility treatment records, and records relating to gender reassignment will not be included.

During summer 2021, all GP practices within Shopshire, Telford and Wrekin will have access to One Health and Care along with the following organisations:

• Shropshire Community Health NHS Trust
• Midlands Partnership NHS Foundation Trust
• Shropshire Council (Social care)
• Telford & Wrekin Council (Social care)
• Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust
• Robert Jones & Agnes Hunt Orthopaedic Hospital NHS Foundation Trust

If patients or clients are happy for their records to be available on One Health and Care to health and social care professionals, they don’t need to do anything. Alternatively, if they wish to raise an objection, they need to contact their GP Practice.

For more information, contact:

E: onehealthandcare@nhs.net

Please view our Privacy Notice here.

We are committed to protecting your privacy and personal data. Our Privacy notice (linked above) will inform you as to how we look after your personal data and tell you about your privacy rights and how the law protects you. It is important that you read our privacy notice. This has been updated to reflect changes to the Data Protection Act in May 2018 (GDPR).

You can visit our website without telling us who you are and without revealing any information about yourself. If you use our website to make contact with us you will, however, be required to provide your name and contact details. This information is not retained on our website but may be used to enable us to contact you to respond. To use electronic services on our website you will need to have set up a User ID and Password to protect your personal information. Please ask at Reception for more information.

Our website may contain links to other third party websites of interest, plug ins and applications. Clicking on those links or enabling those connections may allow third parties to collect or share data about you. We do not have any control over these third party websites and are not responsible for their privacy statements. When you leave our website we encourage you to read the privacy notice of every website you visit.

Please view our COVID-19 Privacy Notice here.

Please view the practice transparency notice for GPES data for pandemic planning and research (COVID-19) here.

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.