Beechwood Medical Centre

Complaints Procedure

Practice Complaints Procedure

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

How to Complain

We hope that most problems can be sorted out easily and quickly, often at the time they arise and with the person concerned. If your problem cannot be sorted out in this way and you wish to make a complaint, we would like you to let us know as soon as possible – ideally, within a matter of days or at most a few weeks – because this will enable us to establish what happened more easily. If it is not possible to do that, please let us have details of your complaints within 12 months of an incident happening or of becoming aware of the matter complained about.

Complaints should be addressed to Mr M Domarkas (Practice Manager) or in his absence, to the lead GP. Alternatively you may ask for an appointment with Mr M Domarka in order to discuss your concerns. He will explain the complaints procedure to you and will make sure your concerns are dealt with promptly. It will be a great help if you are as specific as possible about your complaint.

What We Shall Do

We shall acknowledge your complaint within 3 working days and we will try to respond in a timely fashion soon after the date you raised the complaint with us after having investigated the matter. We shall then be in a position to offer you an explanation, or a meeting with the people involved. When we look into your complaint, we shall aim to:

  • Find out what happened and what went wrong.
  • Make it possible for you to discuss the problem with those concerned, if you would like this.
  • Make sure you receive an apology, where this is appropriate.
  • Identify what we can do to make sure the problem does not re-occur.
  • If you are unhappy with the response from the practice you may write to the  Parliamentary & Health Service Ombudsman (the Ombudsman), The Advocacy Project (the Independent Health & Care Advocacy Services for Hackney) to request a review of your complaint, which you should do within 12 months of the date of The Practice’s response letter.

Contact details for the Ombudsman, ICAS & NHS England

If you have any questions about whether the Ombudsman will be able to help you, or about how to make a complaint, you can contact their helpline on 0345 015 4033, email on [email protected] or fax 0300 061 4000. Further information about the Ombudsman is available at www.ombudsman.org.uk.

You may contact the The Advocacy Project (the Independent Health & Care Advocacy Services for Hackney) details as below:

Hackney Health and Social Care Complaints Charter

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 note signed by the person concerned will be needed, unless they are incapable (because of illness) of providing this.

Complaining To The Health Authority

We hope that, if you have a problem, you will use our practice complaints procedure. We believe that this will give us the best chance of putting right whatever has gone wrong and an opportunity to improve our practice. But this does not affect your right to approach the local CCG (clinical commissioning group), if you feel that you can not raise your complaint with us.

Date published: 24th August, 2021
Date last updated: 24th August, 2021