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Feedback and complaints

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.

Giving feedback

To provide feedback:

Complaints

If you have a complaint or concern about the service you have received, 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. Please feel free to talk to any of the staff about what is concerning you. They will do their best to try and resolve things at the time. However if you wish to make a more formal 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 would be a great help if you give as much information as possible and put it in writing.

How will we handle your complaint?

We will carry out a thorough investigation which may include reviewing your medical records, phone calls and receiving comments and statements from staff. We will communicate our findings to you in an open, honest and transparent way. This is called a Duty of Candour. We will use complaints as an opportunity to learn and improve our services.

We aim to acknowledge your complaint within three working days and to reply within 35 working days. We will agree how your complaint will be dealt with and keep you informed if the investigation is not running to plan. Sometimes in order to complete a thorough investigation we may need longer than this.

When we look into your complaint, we aim to:

  • Find out what happened and what went wrong and give an explanation
  • Make sure you receive an apology, where this is appropriate
  • Make it possible for you to discuss the problem with those concerned, if you would like this
  • 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.net or by phoning 0117 937 0900, Mondays to Fridays 9am to 5pm.

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

We encourage you to raise any concerns and complaints with us directly. However we understand that you may feel you would like some help with this outside of the practice.

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 someone at the Integrated Care Board or a service who provides an external advocacy service

Contact details are as follows.

BNSSG ICB

The Advocacy People

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 contacting:

The Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman

Website Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO)

Phone 0345 015 4033

Write to The Parliamentary and Health Services Ombudsman
Citygate
Mosley Street
Manchester
M2 3HQ

Page published: 3 July 2023
Last updated: 22 September 2025