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.

We welcome feedback about your experiences, as it lets the practice know what we are doing well and where we could improve. 

Talk to us.  

The Practice is committed to providing high-quality, person-centred care and treatment that’s both safe and effective. However, we understand that there are times when things go wrong. If something goes wrong, or you’re dissatisfied with what we have or haven’t done, tell us and we’ll do our best to put things right. If we can’t resolve matters in the way you want, we’ll explain why it’s not possible to do as you suggest. 

Understandably, you might be upset or distressed when formally raising concerns about you or your loved one’s care. As a result of this, our practice team will treat you with respect and dignity throughout this emotional time. It’s expected you show the same courtesy to them. 

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 allow us to improve our services.    

Who to talk to  

You can speak to any member of staff initially about your concerns. This allows us to work with you to resolve any concern you may have without going through a formal process. Most complaints are best resolved within the practice, and formal complaints should be made via our Practice Manager or Assistant Practice Manager. 

Your formal complaint can be sent to our surgery email address on [email protected] or dropped in to our main Reception desk or posted the surgery address; The Boulevard Medical Practice, Savile Park Road, Halifax, HX1 2ES. 

By making your complaint quickly, it is easier for us to establish what happened. If it is not possible to do that, please let us have details of your complaint:

• Within 12 months of the incident that caused the problem; or
• Within 12 months of discovering that you have a problem, provided this is within 12 months of the incident.

What we will do

We will acknowledge your complaint within three working days. We will then begin a thorough investigation of the complaint raised and you will receive a full written response. When we investigate your complaint, we will aim to:

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

Complaining on behalf of someone else

We take medical confidentiality seriously. If you are complaining on behalf of someone else, we must 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.

If you feel unable to raise your complaint with us directly or if you believe this is not appropriate, you can raise your complaint with the ICB who commission and pay for the NHS services you use by:  

Email: at [email protected]  

Telephone: 01924 552150 Monday to Friday 9-4:30 pm, excluding bank holidays. 

Please note that the team receives a high number of telephone calls daily and may not be able to respond instantly to each one.  

In writing: Patient Advice and Liaison Service, West Yorkshire Integrated Care Board, White Rose House West Parade, Wakefield WF1 1LT 

Please note: The ICB is unable to consider or reconsider the same concerns or complaints you have raised with us.  

Citizens Advice Bureau also provides information and advice about making complaints. 

Take it Further. 

If you remain unhappy after receiving our final reply, you can ask the Health Service Ombudsman to review your complaint independently. 

The Ombudsman is independent of the NHS and free to use. It can help resolve your complaint and tell the NHS how to put things right if it has got them wrong.  

The Ombudsman only has legal powers to investigate certain complaints. You must have received a final response from the Practice before the Ombudsman can look at your complaint. Unless there are exceptional circumstances, it will generally not investigate your complaint if it happened more than 12 months ago. 

Address:  

Manchester 

All post should be sent to their main office in Manchester: 

Parliamentary & Health Service Ombudsman 

Citygate
Mosley Street
Manchester
M2 3HQ 

Phone: 0345 015 4033 

Their lines are open: Monday to Thursday 8.30 am to 5.00 pm | Friday 8.30 am to 12 pm.  

Before considering taking this step, we hope you would let us know what aspect of the complaint has not been dealt with satisfactorily and provide an opportunity for us to consider whether there is anything further that could be done locally to resolve matters. 

For more information, we are happy to provide our Complaint’s Policy. 

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 anonymous 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.

This is to allow the patients full electronic medical record to be shared.

This allows health professionals involved in your care to access your medical records – so they can see what we have and we can see what they have. For example if you are having treatment from the District Nurse team the GP will be able to see that and take into account when planning your treatment.

Your consent to this process has been assumed but you can withhold your consent by telling us. You can also withhold consent on behalf of your children or anyone whom you have Power of Attorney.

Information about the General Practitioners 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 practice manager.

The practice has reviewed and is updating policies and processes in line with GDPR. Please read our Privacy Policies.

All GP practices are required to declare the mean earnings (e.g. average) for GPs working to deliver NHS services to patients at
each practice

The average pay for GPs working at the surgery in the last financial year before tax and National Insurance was £96,108.This is
for 5 part time GPs and 5 locum GPs who worked in the practice for more than 6 months.

Privacy Notice

NHS England – Care.data (part of the Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC))

Care.data has been commissioned to provide data services to NHS England. The data will be used for analysis of the population as a whole, and in smaller sections e.g. by geographical areas, by age group etc, to help you plan demand and improve services for patients. The data will be extracted from your medical record here and held anonymously by the HSCIC, and also shared with other groups e.g. researches.

Patients names will not be extracted but your NHS number, date of birth, gender and postcode will be used. Data will be extracted to link the information from your records here with any records held by hospitals. Once these links have been made your identifiable information is deleted, with only details of your health retained for analysis.

Your consent to this process has been assumed by NHS England but you can withhold your consent by telling us. You can also withhold consent on behalf of your children or anyone whom you have Power if Attorney. You can withhold your consent for the extraction and/or the onward use of this information, even if anonymous.

Statement of intent for the Boulevard Medical Practice

New contractual requirements came into force from 1 April 2014 requiring that GP practices should make available a statement of intent in relation to the following IT developments:

1. Summary Care Record (SCR)
2. GP to GP Record Transfers
3. Patient Online Access to Their GP Record
4. Data for commissioning and other secondary care purposes

Please find below details of our stance with regards to these developments.

Summary Care Record (SCR)

Having your Summary Care Record (SCR) available will help anyone treating you without your full medical record. They will have access to information about any medication you may be taking and any drugs that you have a recorded allergy or sensitivity to.

Of course, if you do not want your medical records to be available in this way then you will need to let us know so that we can update your record.

The Boulevard confirms that your SCR is automatically updated on at least a daily basis to ensure that your information is as up to date as it can possibly be.  This system is operated centrally by NHS England.

GP to GP Record Transfers

NHS England require practices to utilise the GP2GP facility for the transfer of patient records between practices, when a patient registers or de-registers (not for temporary registration).

It is very important that you are registered with a doctor at all times. If you leave your GP and register with a new GP, your medical records will be removed from your previous doctor and forwarded on to your new GP via NHS England. It can take your paper records several weeks to reach your new surgery.

With GP to GP record transfers your electronic record is transferred to your new practice much sooner.

The Boulevard confirms that GP to GP transfers can be done using the GP2GP method.

Patient Online Access to Their GP Record

We currently offer the facility for booking and cancelling appointments and also for ordering your repeat prescriptions on-line. This is done by the SystmOne Online facility and is routinely available to all patients aged 16+.

The Boulevard confirms that access to the Summary Care Record is also now available for patients to view using SystmOne Online.   If you do not already have access – please contact reception – you will need to produce ID and complete an application form for access to SCR Online.

We are also allowing patients to request Coded Data access as from 21st March 2016.  Any patient who already has or is requesting online access after this date can request coded data access. A separate application form is needed for this level of access and will be subject to GP approval.    There is currently a technical issue with the system nationally regarding this access and although the practice will accept applications, granting this access may be delayed until this issue is resolved – this is still unresolved 24/5/16.

This access is expected to be extended to full records in 2017 in line with the NHS Guidance.

Data for commissioning and other secondary care purposes

It is already a requirement of the Health and Social Care Act that practices must meet the reasonable data requirements of commissioners and other health and social care organisations through appropriate and safe data sharing for secondary uses, as specified in the technical specification for care data.

At The Boulevard we have specific arrangements in place to allow patients to “opt out” of care.data which allows for the removal of data from the practice. The Boulevard confirms these arrangements are in place and that we undertake annual training and audits to ensure that all our data is handled correctly and safely via the Information Governance Toolkit. For more information please visit: www.hscic.gov.uk .

24 March 2016

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.