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 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.
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 in writing 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.
Complaints
We hope that if you have a problem you will use our practice complaints procedure. We believe this will give us a chance of putting right whatever has gone wrong and an opportunity to improve our practice. But this does not affect your right to approach the local NHS Board, if you feel you cannot raise your complaint directly with us.
The NHS Board will advise you how they can assist with your complaint. The Complaints Officer can be telephoned on 0141 201 4500
Independent Advise and support
Citizens Advice Scotland operates a free independent and support service for users of NHS services. You can access services by telephoning 0845 231 1010 in first instance.
Phone 0800 377 7330
FAX 0800 377 7331
Website www.spso.org.uk
Practice Complaints Procedure
If you have a complaint or concern about the service you have received from a doctor or any staff member working in this practice please let us know. We operate a Practice complaints procedure as part of a NHS system for dealing with complaints. Our complaints system meets national criteria.
You can speak with our Manager Mrs Angela Livingstone by telephoning 0141 550 7970 or drop her a note
How to complain
We hope that most problems can be resolved easily and quickly. If your problem cannot be resolved in this way and you wish to make an official complaint in writing, we would like you to let us know as soon as possible, ideally within a matter of days because this will enable us to establish what happened more easily. If it is not possible to do that please let us have details of your complaint as soon as possible.
Please put your complaint in writing to the Practice Manager.
Timescales
Complaints will be acknowledged within 3 working days and a response will normally be received within 20 working days.
We will then be in a position to offer you an explanation by letter or a meeting with the people involved or GP of your choice.
We will aim to find out what happened and what went wrong
Complaining on behalf of someone else
Please note that we keep strictly to the rules of clinical confidentiality. A note signed by the person concerned will be needed.
Violence Policy
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.