Clover House Dental Practice Ltd
Complaints handling policy
Code of practice for patient complaints
If you have a complaint or concern about the service you have received from the dentists or any of the staff working in our practice, please let us know. We operate a complaints procedure which adheres to national criteria.
We aim to sort out problems quickly and easily, at the time they arise and with the person concerned. If your problem cannot be sorted 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 most easily. If it is not possible to do that, please let us have details of your complaint within 6 months of the incident that caused the problem or within 6 months of discovering that you have a problem, providing this is within 12 months of the incident.
What We Will do
The persons responsible for dealing with any complaint about the service which we provide is Kimberley Sharp, our complaints manager.
If a patient complains on the telephone or at the reception desk, we will listen to their complaint and offer to refer him or her to the complaints managers. If the complaints managers are not available at the time, then the patient will be told when they will be able to talk to them and arrangements will be made for this to happen. The member of staff will take brief details of the complaint and pass them on. If we cannot arrange this within a reasonable period or if the patient does not wish to wait to discuss the matter, arrangements will be made for someone else to deal with it.
If the patient complains in writing the letter or email will be passed on immediately to the complaints managers.
If a complaint is about any aspect of clinical care or associated fees it will normally be referred to the dentist, unless the patient does not want this to happen.
We will acknowledge the patient’s complaint in writing as soon as possible, normally within three working days.
We will seek to investigate the complaint within ten working days of receipt to give an explanation of the circumstances which led to the complaint. If the patient does not wish to meet us, then we will attempt to talk to them on the telephone. If we are unable to investigate the complaint within ten working days we will notify the patient, giving reasons for the delay and a likely period within which the investigation will be completed.
We will confirm the decision about the complaint in writing immediately after completing our investigation.
Proper and comprehensive records are kept of any complaint received.
We hope that if you have a problem, you will make use of our practice complaints procedure. We believe that this will provide the best chance of putting right whatever has gone wrong and an opportunity to improve our practice. If patients are not satisfied with the result of our procedure then further advice may be obtained from:
The Dental Complaints Service, Stephenson House, 2, Cherry Orchard Road, Croydon, CR0 6BA (Telephone: 08456 120 540)
Review Date: Jan 2020
General Dental Council www.gdc-uk.org
Dental Complaints www.dentalcomplaints.org.uk