Practice Charter

Our Aims :

1. To provide the best medical care possible within the NHS.
2. To ensure easy access to a doctor or nurse who will take the time to make sure you understand your illness and treatment.
3. To treat patients in a friendly and welcoming manner and not as a number in a machine.
4. To provide efficient care of medical emergencies at all times.
5. To enable access to all members of the Primary Health Care Team.
6. To minimise waiting times and to inform patients of any delay.
7. To deal with complaints sympathetically and courteously.

We ask you :

1. Please cancel if you can't make an appointment. Try to be on time.
2. Please only ask for visits where medically essential.
3. Please do not expect a prescription at every visit.
4. Please reserve out of hours calls for real medical emergencies and be aware that the doctor will probably be working the next day as well.
5. Please let us know your ideas for improvements to our facilities and services.

Thank you.

Patient Rights And Responsibilities

You have a right to expect a high standard of medical care from our practice and we will try at all times to provide the best possible care within the resources available.

In order to assist us in this we require that you take full responsibility for ensuring that you do not abuse the service. For example, it is your responsibility to ensure that you keep medical appointments and follow the medical advice given.

Very occasionally a practice/patient relationship breaks down completely. In this situation the patient may choose to register with a different practice. The practice also has a right to remove that patient from their list. This would generally only follow a warning that had failed to remedy the situation and we would normally give the patient a specific reason for the removal.

---

Violent Patients - Zero Tolerance

The NHS operates 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 are obliged to 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 circumstances leading to it.

The PCT is then responsible for providing further medical care for such patients.

Access To Patient Information 

Confidential patient data will be shared within the practice healthcare team and with other healthcare professionals to whom you are referred for care. Your data may be used by those clinical teams providing your care for the essential purpose of clinical audit.

Confidential patient data may also be required for the broader purposes of public health and audit, research, the provision of healthcare services, teaching and training. Data disclosed will be kept to the minimum required to serve the purpose and if possible will be anonymised before disclosure.

Confidential and identifiable patient information will not be disclosed otherwise without explicit consent, unless:

1. It is a matter of life and death and serious harm to you or to another individual.
2. It is overwhelmingly in the public interest to do so
3. There is a legal obligation to do so.
   In all of these circumstances the minimum identifiable information that is essential to serve the purpose may be revealed to someone with a legal entitlement to access the data for that purpose.

All individuals with access to your data have a professional and/or contractual duty of confidentiality.

If you are concerned about any of the ways in which your confidential data is used, further information is available from the practice manager. You are entitled to register an objection, which will be respected if this is possible.

Contact Details For Swindon Primary Care Trust

Swindon PCT is party to the NHS contract held by this practice.
Further details of primary medical services in this area may be obtained from them at the following address:

Swindon PCT,
North Swindon District Centre,
Thamesdown Drive,
Swindon
SN25 4AN
Telephone: 01793 708700
Fax: 01793 708701
Website address: http://www.swindonpct.nhs.uk/  

---

Freedom Of Information – Publication Scheme

The Freedom of Information Act 2000 obliges the practice to produce a Publication Scheme. A Publication Scheme is a guide to the ‘classes’ of information the practice intends to routinely make available.
This scheme is available from reception.

Complaints

It is our intention to always provide the very best quality of service possible but, in spite of this, we do recognise that there may be occasions upon which our service falls short of the high standard that the practice and its patients may expect. This practice follows the NHS complaints procedure when dealing with complaints and a copy of our practice complaints procedure is available at reception.

You may also comment on the service direct to the customer service manager, who will follow-up any concerns appropriately.