Air Balloon Surgery welcomes all feedback about our services.  We would like to hear from you if you have been particularly pleased with the services you have received from us, or if you feel we could make some improvements. Please use our Feedback and Complaints Triage or take our Friends and Family Test and let us know us know how we got on.

Complaints

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 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.

Under the national procedure you have 12 months in which to raise a complaint, from the occurrence giving rise to the complaint or from the time that you become aware of the matter. The complaints manager retains the discretion to investigate complaints brought later than this if there are good reasons for the delay and it is still possible to carry out the investigation.

Complaints should be addressed to the practice manager.  It will be a great help if you are as specific as possible about your complaint and put it in writing.

What We Shall Do

We shall acknowledge your complaint within three working days. We will agree how your complaint will be dealt with and keep you informed if the investigation is not running to plan. When we look into your complaint, we shall aim to:

• Find out what happened and what went wrong and explain this
• 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

Complaints About The Out of Hours Doctor Service

Out of hours services are provided by Brisdoc and complaints about their service need to be directed to them. They can be contacted by e-mail on brisdoc.governance@nhs.netor by phoning 0117 937 0900, Mondays to Fridays 09:00 – 17:00.

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 (for example because of illness) of providing this.

Getting Help With Your Complaint

If you would find it helpful to speak to someone independent of the practice for support and advice in pursuing issues with us, you can contact the following free service:

SEAP (Support Empower Advocate Promote)

• Telephone: 0300 3435704
• Email: Bristol@seap.org.uk
• Website: www.seap.org.uk

Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman

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 the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman if you feel you cannot resolve your complaint with us. If you remain dissatisfied with the outcome of our investigation, you have 60 days in which to ask for an Independent Review.

You can do this by phoning or writing to:

The Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman
Millbank Tower
Millbank
London
SW1P 4QP

Telephone: 0345 015 4033
www.ombudsman.org.uk