Patient Charter

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Your Rights and Responsibilities

For the patients this means:

• Courtesy to the staff at all times – remember they are all working for your benefit but within guidelines established to ensure consistency and accuracy
• Responding in a positive way to questions asked by the reception staff
• To attend appointments on time or give the practice adequate notice that you wish to cancel.   Someone else could use your appointment!
• An appointment is for one person only – where another member of the family needs to be seen or discussed, another appointment should be made
• Patients should make every effort when consulting the surgery to make best use of nursing and medical time – home visits should be medically justifiable and not requested for social convenience
• Patients must allow 2 working days for electronic repeat prescription requests and 4 working days for postal or requests in person. Please give us this time as it is to allow for accurate prescribing
• Out-of-hours calls (e.g. evenings; nights & weekends) should only be made if your concern cannot wait until the surgery is next open

For the Practice this means:

• We will be providing quality health services which meet the patients’ requirements.  
• Practice Leaflet: All new patients will receive a copy of our practice leaflet and copies will be displayed at the reception desk.

Surgery Premises

Our surgery building will be welcoming, easy for patients to find their way around and appropriate to the needs of users, including the disabled.

Patients’ rights to General Medical Services

Patients have the rights to:

• be registered with a General Practitioner
• change doctor if desired
• be offered a health check on joining the practice
• receive urgent care at any time from the practice
• receive appropriate drugs and medicines
• be referred for specialist or second opinion if they and the GP agree
• have the right to view their medical records, subject to the Acts and associated procedure, and to know that those working for the NHS are under legal obligation to keep the contents confidential.

Changes to Procedures

When changes are introduced to practice procedures that affect patients, we will ensure that these are clearly explained, by means of a brochure, waiting room noticeboard, website or individual leaflets, giving as much notice as practicable.

• Repeat Prescriptions: Electronic and online requests will be processed within 2 working days. Requests made at reception or by post take 4 working days

Referrals

Urgent referrals to other health and social care agencies will be made within one working day of the patient consultation. Where requested, our GPs will refer you to a private health provider.

We will normally process non-urgent referrals within five working days of the patient consultation or the doctor’s decision to refer.

Test Results

When a doctor or nurse arranges for a test to be taken the patient will be informed how to obtain the result. (results are normally available after 2 pm the following day)

Transfer of Medical Records

The Practice will endeavour to dispatch any medical record required by the Health Authority within seven working days and same day if the request is urgent. However, increasingly records are transferred to new practices electronically.

Privacy and Confidentiality

We will respect our patients’ privacy, dignity and confidentiality at all times.

Home Visits

GPs are happy to visit those patients too unwell to attend the surgery.

We are unable to guarantee a specific doctor will visit you as this depends on availability and other factors. We would ask you to note that a reason to visit cannot be because you have no transport. The decision to home visit will be at the doctors’ discretion.