WATFORD DENTAL PRACTICE
PATIENT INFORMATION LEAFLET ON COMPLAINT PROCEDURE
Practice Complaints Procedure:
If you have a complaint or a concern about the service you have received from the dentist or any of the staff working in the practice, please let us know. We operate a practice complaints procedure as part of the NHS system for dealing with complaints. Our complaints system adheres to national criteria.
How to complain:
We hope that most problems can be sorted out quickly and easily, often at the time they arise and with the person concerned. If your problem cannot be sorted out this way and you wish to make a complaint, we would like to know as soon as possible.
All complaints should be addressed/written to Practice Manager Miss V. Vojtek or to Mr A. Shah/Mr M. Patel in her absence. They will ensure that your concerns are dealt with promptly. It will be a great deal of help if you are as specific as possible about your complaint.
What we shall do:
We will acknowledge and look in to your complaint within ten working days of the date when you raised it with us. We shall than be in a position to offer you an explanation and identify what we can do to make sure that the problem does not happen again.
Aggressive and Obsessive Complaints:
The practice wants to deal with fair and honest complaints. Any aggressive letters or behaviour by patients will be considered unacceptable.
Complaining on behalf of someone else:
Please note that we keep strictly to the rules of confidentiality. If you are complaining on behalf of someone else, we have to know that you have permission to do so. A note signed by the person concerned will be needed unless they are incapable (because of physical or mental illness) of providing this.
We hope that if you have a problem, you will use our complaints procedure. We believe this will provide the best chance of putting right whatever has gone wrong and ad opportunity to improve our practice. But this does not affect your right to approach the local health authority.
Contacts:
Watford Dental Practice
Miss V. Vojtek – Practice Manager (or in her absence Mr A Shah)
watford.1@btconnect.com
Tel. 01923 225437
For NHS treatment you can make a complaint to the commissioner of NHS services. This is either to NHS England or our local Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) who can be contacted at enquiries.hvccg@nhs.net
NHS England can be contacted at england.contactus@nhs.net.
If you are still unhappy about your NHS compliant, you can contact the Parliamentary Health Ombudsman: please call 0345 015 4033 or visit www.ombudsman.org.uk
For private dental treatment you can contact the GDC private dental complaints service by calling
0845 612 0540 or visiting www.dentalcomplaints.org.uk
You can contact the Care Quality Commission by calling 03000 61 61 61 or visit www.CQC.org.uk
The General Dental Council is responsible for regulating all dental professionals, you can contact them on information@GDC-org.uk or by calling 0845 222 4141.
Updated: September 2016
