Practice Policies & Patient Information

Access to 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 health care 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 without explicit consent, unless:

It is a matter of life and death, or serious harm to you or another individual
It is overwhelmingly in the public interest to do so
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 may be used, further information is available from the practice manager.

You are entitled to register an objection, which will be respected if this is possible.

ACR project for patients with diabetes (and/or other conditions)

The data is being processed for the purpose of delivery of a programme, sponsored by NHS Digital, to monitor urine for indications of chronic kidney disease (CKD) which is recommended to be undertaken annually for patients at risk of chronic kidney disease e.g., patients living with diabetes.

The programme enables patients to test their kidney function from home. We will share your contact details with Healthy.io to enable them to contact you and send you a test kit. This will help identify patients at risk of kidney disease and help us agree any early interventions that can be put in place for the benefit of your care.

Healthy.io will only use your data for the purposes of delivering their service to you. If you do not wish to receive a home test kit from Healthy.io we will continue to manage your care within the Practice. Healthy.io are required to hold data we send them in line with retention periods outlined in the Records Management code of Practice for Health and Social Care.

Further information about this is available at Healthy.io leaflet.

Care Navigation

When making requests, we ask for a brief outline of your problem when you contact to request an appointment.

This is because we have introduced something called ‘care navigation’. It means we are training receptionists and clerical staff to help them help patients by identifying the most appropriate place for their care.

Through this specialist training, our practice team will be able to direct you to the most appropriate health clinician for your needs first.

Receptionists will never offer clinical advice or triage. This new way of working is about offering you the choice to see more appropriate professionals in the practice team or even somewhere else. If they can deal with the problem directly, it will often be quicker and means you may not need to see the GP at all.

By working this way, it helps free up time for GPs to care for patients with complex or serious health conditions that can only be managed by the GP. More importantly though, it means people are seen first by the clinician that is best placed to manage their clinical problem.

Reception staff (care navigators) might suggest other professionals that can help, such as:

Self referrals
Pharmacies
Nurse/Nurse practitioner
Support groups
Family services

The choice is always yours though and you will never be refused an appointment but we hope next time you contact the surgery you will see the value of seeing another health care professional if they are able to help.

If you would like someone to explain this to you in person, a member of our practice team will be happy to help.

Care Quality Commission

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) makes sure hospitals, care homes, dental and GP surgeries, and all other care services in England provide people with safe, effective, compassionate and high-quality care, and encourages them to make improvements where possible.

They do this by inspecting services and publishing the results on their website: www.cqc.org.uk

You can use the results to help you make better decisions about the care you, or someone you care for, receives.

Our CQC Inspection

Our practice is inspected by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) to ensure we are meeting essential standards of quality and safety.

This widget provides a summary of the results of the latest checks carried out by the CQC.

Chaperones

Confidentiality

Under the Data Protection Act 1998, you have a right to know who holds personal information about you. This person or organisation is called the data controller. In the NHS, the data controller is usually your local NHS Trust and your GP surgery. The NHS must keep your personal health information confidential; it is your right.

Please be aware that our staff are bound to the NHS code of confidentiality. Our staff are therefore not permitted to discuss any of our patient’s medical history, including their registration status, without their written consent to do so.

Once we have received their written consent and verified this with the patient, we can then we can provide you with this information. This includes complaining on behalf of a patient, but excludes patients who are unable to act on their own behalf and already have a designated person or carer responsible for their medical care.

We therefore respectfully ask parents and guardians not to request information regarding their relatives, or to complain on their behalf, unless we have their written consent to do so.

Disability Access

Freedom of Information

GDPR/Privacy Notices

Your Information

Victoria Road takes privacy seriously and we want to provide you with information about your rights, who we share your information with and how we keep it secure.

Please use the links below to find more information about the practice and data protection.

GP Earnings

NHS England require that the net earnings of doctors engaged in the practice are publicised, and the required disclosure is shown below. However, it should be noted that the prescribed method for calculating earnings is potentially misleading because it does not take into account how much time doctors spend working in the practice. Therefore it should not be used to form any judgement about GP earnings, nor to make any comparison with any other practice.

All GP practices are required to declare mean earnings (eg. average pay) for GPs working to deliver GP services to patients at each practice.

The average pay for GPs working at Victoria Road Surgery in the last financial year was £129,627 before tax and National Insurance. This is for 3 full time GPs, 3 part time GP and 0 locum GPs who worked in the practice for more than six months.

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 very best care possible 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 and patient relationship breaks down completely. In this situation, the patient may choose to register with a different practice. The practice also has the 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.

Suggestions, Comments and Complaints

Suggestions & Complaints

The surgery always try to give you the best service possible; however, there may be times when you feel this has not happened. This information explains what to do if you have a suggestion as to how we can improve our services to patients, or if you wish to express dissatisfaction.

The surgery offer an in-house procedure to deal with your concerns. We hope that, should the need arise, you will use it to guve us an opportunity of looking into, and if necessary correcting, any problems that may have arisen. This procedures is not able to deal with questions of legal liability or compensation.

Please note that we have to respect our duty of confidentiality to patients, and a patient’s consent will be necessary if a complaint is not made by that patient in person.

If you wish to make a complaint, please note that this practice follows the NHS complaints procedure when dealing with complaints, please contact the surgery via the Practice Manager, either directly by telephone, or by letter or you can click the link below and complete the online feedback form. He will take the full details of your complaint and decide how best to resolve it.

A copy of our practice complaints procedure is available at reception.

For any suggestions and comments, please complete our online feedback form.

Alternatively, patients can complain directly to NHS Norfolk and Waveney Integrated Care Board (ICB). However, a patient can not complain to both the surgery and the ICB about the same matter.

Prior to taking forward a complaint, patients may wish to contact the NHS Complaints Advocacy Service, Voiceability. This organisation can provide confidential advice and support to patients considering making a complaint.

We place great importance upon dealing with any complaints swiftly, and you will normally be offered a meeting to discuss matters with a senior member of staff within seven days. Any delay will be to enable us to investigate the matter fully. You may wish to bring a friend or relative with you to the meeting if you wish.

We will try to address your concerns fully, provide you with an explanation, and discuss any action that may be needed. We hope that at the end of the meeting, you will feel that we have dealt with the matter thoroughly, and that it has been resolved to your satisfaction. However, if this is not possible and you wish to continue with your complaint, we will direct you to the appropriate authorities who may be able to help you.

Summary Care Records

There is a central NHS computer system called the summary care record (SCR). It is an electronic record which contains information about the medicines you take, allergies you suffer from and any bad reactions to medicines you have had. Over time it will build to include information about other health issues considered important to your wellbeing.

Why Do I Need a Summary Care Record?

Storing information in one place makes it easier for healthcare staff to treat you in an emergency, or when your GP practice is closed.

This information could make a difference to how a doctor decides to care for you, for example which medicines they choose to prescribe for you.

Who Can See It?

Only healthcare staff involved in your care can see your summary care record.

How Do I Know If I Have One?

Over half of the population of England now have a summary care record. You can find out whether summary care records have come to your area by asking the surgery directly.

Enhanced Summary Care Record

If you wanted to ‘enhance’ your record it would include the following information:

Significant medical history (past and present)
Reason for medication
Anticipatory care information (important in the management of long term conditions)
Communication preferences
End of life care information
Immunisations

You can opt in for an enhanced summary care record at any time.

Children Under The Age Of 16

Patients under 16 years will have an enhanced summary care record created for them unless their GP surgery is advised otherwise. If you are the parent or guardian of a child under 16 then you should make this information available to them if you they are old enough to decide for themselves if they want a summary care record.

Whatever you decide, you can change your mind at any time.

If you are a family member or carer of a person and you have concerns that they may not have the mental capability to make this decision, please contact the practice.

Do I Have To Have One?

No, it is not compulsory. If you choose to opt out of the scheme, then you will need to complete the summary care record opt out form.

More Information

For further information please visit the HSCIC Website.

Training Practice

This practice is involved in training fully qualified doctors who wish to gain further experience in general practice. These doctors work with us as registrars, usually for 6-12 months. We also occasionally have medical students attached to the practice. If you have any objection to seeing either a general practitioner registrar or a medical student, please inform us when requesting a GP appointment.

This practice also trains qualified nurses who wish to become either district nurses or health visitors, as well as being involved in the basic training of general nurses.

Recording

Surgery consultations are sometimes recorded on videotape for training and assessment purposes. You will be informed of this beforehand and your permission to take part in this will be sought. We would like to stress that you are under no obligation whatsoever to help us in this way, and we will not be upset at all if you decline to take part. The video tapes will only be watched by doctors involved in training and assessment and will be erased after they have been studied.

We may also monitor, record, store and use any telephone, email or other communication with you. This is in order to check any instructions given to us, for training purposes, for crime prevention and to improve the quality of our services.

Zero Tolerance

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.