Code of Practice for Patient Complaints

We want our service to meet your expectations. If you have a concern or complaint about any aspect of our service, we want to know what mistakes we made and identify how we can improve to ensure that we meet your expectations in future. Our aim is to learn from any feedback we receive and improve the service we provide to our patients.

We will deal with complaints courteously and promptly and aim to resolve the matter as quickly as possible.

Making a complaint

If you wish to make a complaint or simply let us know how we could have done better, please contact us with your complaint, this will be passed onto our Complaints’ Manager:

• By telephone on 01527 872 528

• By email at hello@newroaddentalpractice.com

• By letter to The Complaints’ Manager, New Road Dental, 68 New Road, Bromsgrove, B60 2LA

• In person

The Complaints’ Manager usually works at the practice Monday to Wednesday from 9am to 5pm and will endeavour to be available during these times. You may find it more convenient to make an appointment with Complaints’ Manager to ensure that she can dedicate sufficient time to meet with you.

If you contact the practice to make a complaint and the Complaints’ Manager is not available, we will arrange a convenient time for them to contact you. We will ask you for brief details of your complaint so that the Complaints’ Manager can gather any useful information before contacting you. You will be given a copy of the notes made for the Complaints’ Manager.

If the matter requires a more immediate response, we will arrange for a senior member of the dental team to deal with it.

If your complaint is about your dental treatment or the fee charged, we will usually ask the dentist concerned to contact you, unless you do not want this.

We acknowledge all complaints in writing and enclose a copy of this code of practice as soon as possible, normally within 3 working days.

Investigating a complaint

We will offer to discuss the complaint with you and will ask how you would like to be kept informed of developments – by telephone, letters or e-mail or by face-to-face meetings. We will let you know how we will deal with your complaint and the likely time that the investigation will take to complete. If you do not wish to discuss the complaint further, we will still let you know the expected timescale for completing the investigation.

We will investigate your complaint within 60 working days and, as far as reasonably practicable, will let you know how our investigation is progressing.

When we have completed our investigation, we will provide you with a full written report, unless you have told us that you do not wish for further communication. The report will explain how we considered the complaint, the conclusions we reached for each part of your complaint, details of any remedial action we have taken and whether further action is needed.

Records

We keep proper and comprehensive records of any complaints that we receive and the action we have taken following investigation. We review these records regularly to ensure that we recognise our mistakes and take every opportunity to improve our service.

Complaints to External Bodies

We hope that, if you have a problem, you will make use of our practice complaints procedure. We believe this will provide the best chance of putting right whatever has gone wrong and an opportunity to improve our practice. However, this does not affect your right to complain to an independent body, if you feel you cannot raise your complaint with us or you are dissatisfied with the result of our investigation.

The CQC: The CQC don’t get directly involved with complaints made to the practice. They do, however, encourage giving feedback to service providers.

To send feedback to the CQC please go to: https://www.cqc.org.uk/give-feedbackon-care

Telephone: 03000 616161 (Mon to Fri, 8.30am – 5.30pm Excluding Bank Holidays)

NHS: If you would rather not go directly to your practice, you can contact your local ICB, which is responsible for NHS dental services – Herefordshire and Worcestershire ICB. You can also contact the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman if you are unhappy with how the practice, or ICB, has dealt with your complaint.
Telephone: 0345 015 4033
Website: https://www.ombudsman.org.uk

Private: Dental Complaints Service
Telephone: 0208 253 0800 (Mon-Fri, 9am-5pm)
Website: https://dcs.gdc-uk.org/

GDC
Telephone: 0854 222 4141 or 0207 887 3800
Website: https://contactus.gdc-uk.org/Complaint/Process/13