The accessible information standard is a new ‘information standard’ for implementation by all organisations that provide NHS or adult social care. The standard aims to ensure that people who have a disability or sensory loss receive information that they can access and understand e.g. large print, braille or via email. This includes professional communication support if they need it e.g. a British Sign Language interpreter. The standard requires organisations that provide NHS or adult social care to:

• Ask people if they have any information or communication needs, and find out how to meet their needs.
• Record those needs clearly and in a set way.
• Highlight or flag the person’s file or notes so it is clear that they have information or communication needs and how to meet those needs.
• Share people’s information and communication needs with other providers of NHS and adult social care, when they have consent or permission to do so.
• Take steps to ensure that people receive information which they can access and understand, and receive communication support if they need it.

Although not exhaustive, the standard is likely to apply to:

• People who are blind and/or deaf.
• Those who have some hearing or visual loss.
• People with learning disabilities.

Successful implementation of the standard aims to improved outcomes and experiences, and the provision of safer and more personalised care and services to those individuals who come within the standard’s scope.

At practice level, we will be making sure that we amend our commonly used forms to ask patients if they have any special communication needs. We will then record any on the patient’s medical record so that anyone seeing the patient is aware that the patient may need assistance with communication. We will make sure that all our forms are available in larger print for patients.

If you do have any special communication needs, please let us know so that we can help.

There are occasions when patients need to be examined by a clinician which may involve intimate examinations. A chaperone provides a safeguard for patients during such an examination or consultation and protects against verbal, physical, sexual or other abuse for both patient and clinician. A clinician has the right to request a chaperone if they feel it necessary.

Cromer Group Practice is committed to putting patients at ease wherever possible. If you wish a chaperone to be present during an examination, please do not hesitate to ask a clinician or one of our receptionists. It may not be possible for such a person to be provided immediately, and you may have to return for the examination to be carried out at a mutually convenient time.

Trust is important in the relationship between clinician and patient, and we would at all times wish you to feel able to ask for a chaperone. It is the policy of Cromer Group Practice to respect the privacy, dignity, cultural, and religious beliefs of our patients.

The practice complies with the Data Protection Act. All information about patients is confidential: from the most sensitive diagnosis, to having visited the surgery or being registered at the practice. All patients can expect that their personal information will not be disclosed without their permission, except in the most exceptional of circumstances e.g. when somebody is at grave risk of serious harm.

All members of the primary health care team (from reception to doctors) in the course of their duties will have access to your medical records. They all adhere to the highest standards of maintaining confidentiality.

As our reception area is a little public, if you wish to discuss something of a confidential nature please mention it to one of the receptionists who will make arrangements for you to have the necessary privacy.

Under 16s

The duty of confidentiality owed to a person under 16 is as great as the duty owed to any other person. Young people aged under 16 years can choose to see health professionals, without informing their parents or carers. If a GP considers that the young person is competent to make decisions about their health, then the GP can give advice, prescribe and treat the young person without seeking further consent.

However, in terms of good practice, health professionals will encourage young people to discuss issues with a parent or carer. As with older people, sometimes the law requires us to report information to appropriate authorities in order to protect young people or members of the public.

Useful websites

• Confidentiality NHS code of practice
• Confidentiality and mental health
• Confidentiality guidance

The vast majority of our patients attend their appointments or let us know if they cannot attend or no longer need them. We really appreciate this as it means we can free those appointments up to be used by other patients.

However, a small but significant number of patients miss their appointments without cancelling them. This means the doctor or nurse is waiting for the patient to arrive, when they could have been seeing another patient.

If you cannot attend your appointments for any reason, please let us know within one working day of your appointment or as soon as possible so that we can offer the appointment to someone else.

If you repeatedly fail to attend appointments, you may be removed from the practice list and may be required to find an alternative doctor.

We are continually looking to turn patient feedback into real improvements in the services we provide. We use it to focus on the things that matter most to our patients, carers and their families.

Giving feedback

To provide feedback:

• fill out an online feedback form
• take part in the Friends and Family Test
• leave a review on the NHS website
• phone us on 01263 513148

Making a complaint

If you have a complaint or concern about the service 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 a National Health Service 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, this will enable us to establish what happened more easily. If it is not possible to do that, please contact the practice with details of your complaint within one year of the incident.

Complaints should be addressed to the practice manager or any of the doctors. Alternatively, you may ask for an appointment with the practice manager order to discuss your concerns. They will explain the complaints procedure to you, and make sure that your concerns are dealt with promptly by agreeing a plan of action about how the complaint will be investigated, who will be involved, what expectations you have, and a timescale for a response. 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 three working days. 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 doesn’t happen again.

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 NHS Anglia or NHS England

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 an opportunity to improve our practice. This does not affect your right to approach NHS England if you feel you cannot raise your complaint with us. You should contact the Complaints Manager:

Address
NHS England,
PO Box 16738,
Redditch,
B97 9PT

Phone
0300 311 2233

Email
england.contactus@nhs.net

POhWER

You may also contact a statutory body known as POhWER, which provides help and support to patients and carers when they have a complaint about NHS treatment. Contact details are:

Address
POhWER,
PO Box 14043,
Birmingham,
B6 9BL

Phone
0300 456 2370

Email
pohwer@pohwer.net

Care Quality Commission

You may also contact the Care Quality Commission with your concerns. Their contact details are:

Phone
03000 616161

Email
enquiries@cqc.org.uk

The Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman

If you remain unhappy with our investigation, you may ask for an independent review by contacting:

Address
The Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman for England,
Millbank Tower,
Millbank, London,
SW1P 4QP

Phone
0345 015 4033

Email
phso.enquiries@ombudsman.org.uk

The Freedom of Information Act creates a right of access to recorded information and obliges a public authority to:

• Have a publication scheme in place.
• Allow public access to information held by public authorities.

The Act covers any recorded organisational information such as reports, policies or strategies, that is held by a public authority in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, and by UK-wide public authorities based in Scotland. It does not, however, cover personal information e.g. patient records, which are covered by the Data Protection Act.

Public authorities include government departments, local authorities, the NHS, state schools and police forces.

The Act is enforced by the Information Commissioner who regulates both the Freedom of Information Act and the Data Protection Act.

The surgery publication scheme

A publication scheme requires an authority to make information available to the public as part of its normal business activities. The scheme lists information under seven broad classes, which are:

• Who we are and what we do.
• What we spend and how we spend it.
• What our priorities are and how we are doing it.
• How we make decisions.
• Our policies and procedures.
• Lists and registers.
• The services we offer.

You can request our publication scheme leaflet at the surgery.

Who can request information?

Under the Act, any individual, anywhere in the world, is able to make a request to a practice for information. An applicant is entitled to be informed in writing, by the practice, whether the practice holds information of the description specified in the request and if that is the case, have the information communicated to him. An individual can request information, regardless of whether he/she is the subject of the information or affected by its use.

How should requests be made?

Requests must:

• Be made in writing (this can be electronically e.g. email/fax).
• State the name of the applicant and an address for correspondence.
• Describe the information requested.

Personal data about staff and patients is covered under the Data Protection Act.

For more information see these websites:

• Legislation GOV.UK
• Information Commissioners Office

Your information

Cromer Group Practice 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.

• Transparency
• CCTV
• Telephone recording
• Case finding
• Information sharing Norfolk and Waveney

Digitised patient paper records

Cromer Group Practice is undertaking a new initiative to digitise your GP paper records. This simply means scanning the current paper copy to create a new digital copy which can be kept in your main GP electronic record. Paper copies will then be destroyed.

We would like to assure patients that a full assessment of how your data will be managed and kept secure has been undertaken with the advice of our Data Protection Officer. We have taken steps to make sure that the copies created are of good quality and accurate.

A contract is in place between us and the provider of the scanning services and we have performed checks on the provider of the service and the secure sharing and storage of patient data. You can find out more about the provider at https://www.necsws.com/privacy-notice.

Patient requests for medical records or reports

We use a processor, iGPR Technologies Limited (“iGPR”), to assist us with responding to report requests relating to your patient data, such as subject access requests that you submit to us (or that someone acting on your behalf submits to us) and report requests that insurers submit to us under the Access to Medical Records Act 1988 in relation to a life insurance policy that you hold or that you are applying for.

iGPR manages the reporting process for us by reviewing and responding to requests in accordance with our instructions and all applicable laws, including UK data protection laws.

The instructions we issue to iGPR include general instructions on responding to requests and specific instructions on issues that will require further consultation with the GP responsible for your care.

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

The average pay for GPs working in Cromer Group Practice in the last financial year was £73,047 before tax and national insurance. This is for 4 full time GPs, 1 part time GPs and 5 locum GPs who worked in the practice for more than six months.

However, it should be noted that the prescribed method for calculating earnings is potentially misleading because it takes no account of how much time doctors spend working in the practice and should not be used to form any judgement about GP earnings, nor to make any comparison with any other practice.

The figures have been calculated in accordance with guidance issued by NHS England as part of the GMS contract, and there have been no changes to this since last year. As we have previously highlighted, the guidance is far from comprehensive, such that it has been necessary to make several assumptions to arrive at the average pay. These assumptions are however consistent with those used in previous years.

We aim to keep our surgery clean and tidy, and offer a safe environment to our patients and staff.

If you have any concerns about cleanliness or infection control, please report these to our reception staff.

Our GPs and nursing staff follow our infection control policy to ensure the care we deliver and the equipment we use is safe.

We take additional measures to ensure we maintain the highest standards:

• Encourage staff and patients to raise any issues, or report any incidents relating to cleanliness and infection control. We can discuss these and identify improvements we can make to avoid any future problems.
• Carry out an annual infection control audit to make sure our infection control procedures are working.
• Provide annual staff updates and training on cleanliness and infection control.
• Review our policies and procedures to make sure they are adequate and meet national guidance.
• Maintain the premises and equipment to a high standard within the available financial resources, and ensure that all reasonable steps are taken to reduce or remove all infection risk.
• Use washable or disposable materials for items such as couch rolls, modesty curtains, floor coverings, towels etc. We also ensure that these are laundered, cleaned or changed frequently to minimise risk of infection.
• Make alcohol hand rub gel available throughout the building.

The practice will deliver efficient and effective primary care to the community by ensuring that:

• We are driven by the health needs of our patients, by best clinical and managerial practice and by benchmarking our performance.
• We demand professionalism at all levels and accept the need for ongoing training and personal development within the team.
• We are outward looking and opportunistic. Aiming to maximise service level improvements through partnerships and agreements within the community and wider health area.
• We are pro-active and forward looking in the fields of medical and business innovation.
• We believe in a primary care-led health service.
• We are committed to a caring, understanding and human approach to patient care and to fairness and mutual respect within the team.

We have allocated a named accountable GP for all of our registered patients.

If you do not know who your named GP is, please ask a member of our reception team. Unfortunately, we are unable to notify patients in writing of any change of GP due to the costs involved.

The summary care record will initially consist of basic information from the patient record, such as your date of birth, address, details of allergies, current prescriptions, and bad reactions to medicines. Then, each time a patient uses an NHS service, more information may be added to it.

In Norfolk, many patients have had summary care records (SCR) created, and these can be accessed (with patient consent) by hospitals, A&E departments, the out of hours services, 111 and the ambulance service. If you wish to opt out, please contact reception or use the online opt out form.

More information about the summary care record can be found on the NHS Care Records website.

Enhanced summary care records

Additional information can be added to your SCR by your GP (this is known as an enhanced summary care records) and is a summary of information about your medical history.

An enhanced summary care record can include the following:

•  Your long team health conditions e.g. asthma, heart problems, or rare medical conditions.
•  Your relevant medical history, such as clinical procedures that you have had, why you need a particular medicine, the care you are currently receiving, and clinical advice to support your future care.
•  Your healthcare needs and personal preferences – You may have a particular communication needs, a long term condition that needs to be managed in a particular way, you may have legal decisions, or have preferences about your care that you would like to be known.
•  Immunisations – Details of previous vaccinations, such as tetanus and routine childhood jabs.

Please note that specific sensitive information such as any fertility treatments, sexually transmitted infections, pregnancy terminations or gender reassignment will not be included, unless you specifically ask for any of these items to be included.

How will additional information help me?

Essential details about your healthcare can be very difficult to remember, particularly when you are unwell. Having additional information in your enhanced summary care record means that when you need healthcare, this information will be available to the clinician providing treatment to you, no matter which NHS organisation they work for.

There are already clear benefits for your care from having medication, allergy and adverse reaction information available through your regular SCR. If you choose to add additional information through the enhanced summary care record, this can further increase the quality of your care. Additional information can also empower you if you need some help to communicate your complex care needs.

• The NHS has produced a leaflet to provide further information on the enhanced summary care record.

We are proud to be a well-established training practice, helping qualified doctors, known as registrars, complete the final stages of their GP training.

We believe that achieving and maintaining training practice status enhances the quality of the medical care that we provide at the practice. It also enables patients to see a wider range of clinicians, whilst allowing the surgery to benefit from the fresh ideas and approaches brought by young enthusiastic doctors. You can, of course, still elect to see your chosen regular doctor, but sometimes this may require you to plan your appointment.

We have been a training practice for many years, and the feedback from patients regarding our registrars has been overwhelmingly positive. The doctors tend to be in the surgery for between 6 and 12 months, becoming an integral part of the practice team and an invaluable resource for patients.

Video recordings

As a training practice video recordings are sometimes made of consultations. These are made for teaching purposes only. Video recordings are only done with your consent and you do have the right to refuse. However, we would stress that all aspects of general practice, including training, are governed by rules of strict confidentiality. No examinations are filmed.

Medical students

As a teaching practice, patients may also meet medical students in the surgery or accompanying the doctor on their calls. These students are going through a very important part of their medical training and your co-operation is extremely valuable and much appreciated. However, no intrusion on the privacy of the consultation will take place against the wishes of the patient.

Our GP registrar is Dr James Whitehead.

GPs and practice staff have a right to care for others without fear of being attacked or abused.

We ask that you treat the doctors, nurses, and practice staff with the same courtesy and respect with which they afford you. Violent, aggressive, or abusive patients may be refused medical treatment, reported to the police, and may be struck off the GPs list.

The NHS operate a zero tolerance policy with regards 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 record the fact of the removal and the circumstances leading to it.