Our Practice

Our Practice

Sutton Coldfield Group Practice is a multi-site GP Practice, whose constituent surgeries also form a single Primary Care Network. The practice sites are: Ley Hill Surgery, Tudor Practice, Four Oaks Medical Practice, Sutton Park Surgery, Falcon Medical Centre and Vesey Practice.

Policies & Useful Information

Registrars

Sometimes registered doctors who have had extensive hospital experience and who hope to enter general practice will be invited to join the practice for six months or a year to gain insight into the problems with which we deal. The receptionist will tell you who they are when you book an appointment with them.

They are fully trained, capable doctors who bring their own wealth of experience to the practice and remain under our supervision. Please accept them as one of us.

Medical Students

The practice is one of 59 in Birmingham and its environs chosen by the University of Birmingham to teach medical students. As part of a radical change in the training of doctors, students now come into general practices from the third week of their course. On the days that students are in the practice there may be one or two sitting in with the doctor you are seeing. If this is so, the receptionist will ask whether you are happy with this arrangement. Please say if you are not. Whilst we are very pleased to be involved in student teaching we do not want any of our patients to feel uncomfortable about the arrangement. Your care will not be affected if you say you would rather the student(s) did not sit in on your consultation. We also ask patients with specific problems to come and talk to the students at greater length so that the students can understand what it is like to live with an illness or disability.

We are very grateful to our patients for helping us educate the next generation of doctors.

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.

Patient Feedback

We make every effort to give the best possible service to everyone who attends our surgeries. Please tell us about your experience on our patient feedback page and share any feedback, suggestions or comments you have with us.

Complaints

If you have a complaint or concern about the service that you have received from the doctors or any of the staff working in our surgeries, please let us know direct. We operate a complaints procedure as part of the NHS system for dealing with complaints. Our system meets national criteria.

How to Complain

You should normally make a complaint within twelve months of the event, or within twelve months of becoming aware that you have something to complain about. However, these time limits may be waived if there are good reasons why you could not complain earlier and if we are still able to investigate the complaint fairly and effectively in spite of the delay.

Complaints can be made in writing to the service delivery manager, Nicki Frost, via email at: [email protected].

What We Will Do

We will acknowledge receipt of your complaint within 3 working days either orally or in writing and will offer to discuss the matter with you.

We will offer you a meeting with the service delivery manager, Nicki Frost, to agree a timeframe for resolution and to reach an agreement with you on how you wish the complaint to be handled and the likely period for completion of the investigation and response to you. If you would prefer not to accept the offer of a discussion, we will determine a specified response period and notify you in writing of that period.

We will aim to investigate and deal with all complaints efficiently and speedily. We will send you a written response with a report on the investigation as soon as reasonably practicable. If we are not able to meet the response deadline we have agreed with you, we will contact you to advise why and negotiate another timescale.

All oral complaints will be recorded in writing by the practice and you will be provided with a copy of the written record.

When we look into your complaints, we will aim to:

  • Find out what happened and what went wrong
  • Advise you what we will do to put the matter right
  • Make sure you receive an apology where this is appropriate.
  • Identify what we can do to make sure the problem does not happen again.

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

If you are not content with the outcome of your complaint at a local level you can ask the Ombudsman to independently review your case by writing to:

The Parliamentary and Health Services Ombudsman

Millbank Tower

Millbank

London

SW1P 4QP

Or email: [email protected]

Or phone: 0345 015 4033

Website: www.ombudsman.org.uk

Although the practice would welcome the opportunity to investigate your complaint, you may prefer to choose to make your complaint to NHS England; details as follows:

Email: [email protected]

Contact Number: 0300 311 2233

Postal address:

NHS England

PO Box 16738

REDDITCH

B97 9PT

Complaining on Behalf of Someone Else

Please note that we keep strictly to the rules of medical confidentiality. 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, unless they are incapable (because of illness) of providing this

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.

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 surgery team leader.

The average pay for GPs working at Sutton Coldfield Group Practice in the last financial year was £74,969 before tax and National Insurance. This is for 6 full time and 35 part time GPs.

NHS England require that the net earnings of doctors engaged in the Practice is publicized, and the required disclosure is shown above. However, it should be noted that the prescribed method for calculating earnings is potentially misleading because it takes no account of how much time doctors spend working in the Practice, and should not be used to form any judgement about GP earnings, nor to make any comparison with any other Practice.

How we use your medical records

Important information for patients

  • This practice handles medical records in-line with laws on data protection and confidentiality.
  • We share medical records with those who are involved in providing you with care and treatment.
  • In some circumstances we will also share medical records for medical research, for example to find out more about why people get ill.
  • We share information when the law requires us to do so, for example, to prevent infectious diseases from spreading or to check the care being provided to you is safe.
  • You have the right to be given a copy of your medical record.
  • You have the right to object to your medical records being shared with those who provide you with care.
  • You have the right to object to your information being used for medical research and to plan health services.
  • You have the right to have any mistakes corrected and to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office.  Please see the practice privacy notice below or speak to a member of staff for more information about your rights.

All our patients have an allocated named GP, which is your registered GP. If you wish to know who this is please ask at reception.

Please note that you can still choose to see the GP of your choice

The NHS in England has introduced the Summary Care Record, which will be used in emergency care. The record will contain information about any medicines you are taking, allergies you suffer from and any bad reactions to medicines you have had, to ensure those caring for you have enough information to treat you safely.

As a patient you have a choice:

  • Yes I would like a Summary Care Record – you do not need to do anything and a Summary Care Record will be created for you. Healthcare staff will ask your permission before they look at your record, except in certain circumstances for example if you are unconscious.
  • No I do not want a Summary Care Record – Complete an Opt Out Form, seal and return to the practice, or alternatively give to your GP practice. Additional copies of the opt out form can be picked up from your GP practice or requested from the dedicated NHS Summary Care Record Information line on 0300 123 3020.

Further information can be found on the Summary Care Record Leaflet, which provides more information to help you decide.

For more information, telephone the dedicated NHS Summary Care Record Information Line on 0300 123 3020 or visit the website at www.nhscarerecords.nhs.uk, where you can find information in other formats and languages.

You can choose not to have a Summary Care Record and you can change your mind at any time by informing your GP practice.

Your Summary Care Record will be created over the next 12 months, subject to your practice participating, but you should make your choice within 12 weeks from the date of this letter.

If you do nothing we will assume that you are happy with these changes and create a Summary Care Record for you. If you are the parent or guardian of a child under 16 and feel that they are old enough to understand, then you should make this information available to them.

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.