South East Health - Out of hours medical care, Primary care health services

Complaints Procedure

How to raise your concerns

What you can expect 

• A full explanation of what happened from the service point of view
• An apology if one is due
• An explanation of what has been learnt from the complaint and action taken to prevent a recurrence in the future  

What we cannot do

• We cannot give financial compensation
• We cannot deal with a complaint when you have advised us in writing that you intend to take legal proceedings about it 

How we will do this

• You will receive an acknowledgement within three working days of receipt of your complaint letter. You will receive a copy of this information leaflet with the acknowledgement letter. A consent form and a business reply envelope will also be enclosed.
• You will be requested to complete and sign the consent form, and return it in the business reply envelope. If you are making a complaint on behalf of a patient, you will see that you will need to obtain their signature on the consent form. This consent procedure authorises us to access the database records we hold relating to the patient concerned, to enable the complaint to be fully investigated. In order to provide advice and/or treatment to patients, we have to collect personal information from them – basic identification details such as surname, forename(s), date of birth, telephone contact number(s), and some healthcare details such as health problems and symptoms, previous and current medication, etc.  
• Your complaint will be handled administratively by one of the three members of the Clinical Governance Team.
• Complaints concerning medical advice and/or treatment are reviewed by a Medical Director, who is a General Practitioner.  
• Complaints concerning advice and/or treatment provided by Nursing staff, and matters concerning operational procedures and/or operations staff, are reviewed by the Director of Clinical Services.
• We will always aim to provide you with a full written response within 25 working days of the date we receive your signed consent. If we experience a delay in obtaining responses from relevant practitioners/staff e.g. because of their sickness or leave absence, we will send you an interim response to confirm that the investigation is proceeding.
• If you are satisfied with the response to the complaint, this will close the complaint.

If you remain dissatisfied

• You should explain why you are not satisfied, identify issues that you feel have not been addressed fully and the practitioner/service will be asked to review the matter  
• You can meet with us to try to reach a satisfactory outcome. We call this a Local Resolution Meeting. If you feel that it would benefit you to have someone to accompany you to such a meeting, and to put your views across/assist you in doing so, you can contact the Independent Complaints Advocacy Service (ICAS). They are a completely impartial and independent organisation. Their contact details are at the end of this leaflet.  
• An Independent Mediator can sometimes be involved to assist in achieving local resolution.  Mediators are trained in the skills of resolving disputes and are familiar with the NHS and Primary Care.  They are independent of the service and do not personally know the parties involved in the complaint.  The Mediator will listen to all aspects of the complaint and assist in finding a resolution to the problem.
• Either party can request mediation but both parties must agree before it can proceed.

If local resolution has not been achieved 

Contact details