Information about you and the care you receive is shared, in a secure system, by healthcare staff to support your treatment and care.

Care Data

There are occasions when examinations of an intimate nature are needed.  This practice is committed to putting our patients at ease and therefore has made a chaperone service available to our patients.  Chaperones may not always be available immediately therefore the patient may have to make an appointment for a mutually convenient time.

Patients can also bring a relative or friend to act as their chaperone.

In line with Department of Health Guidelines the Practice has a complaints procedure. It is available in the following languages – Farsi, Polish, Urdu and Hungarian.  Equally we welcome constructive criticism so we can ensure our services are meeting the needs of our patients.

Complaint Procedure – English

Complaints procedure – Urdu

Complaints procedure – Polish

Complaints procedure – Farsi

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 anonymised 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.

The Grange Group Practice works hard to ensure patients can access health care professionals and services when needed.

The appointment system is audited regularly to monitor the amount of “wasted” clinical time due to patients not attending appointments.

In an attempt to reduce the amount of missed appointments, the Grange Group Practice operate a strict Did Not Attend (DNA) Policy.

Patients are encouraged to cancel appointments in advance if they cannot attend.

DNA Policy Overview

The DNA policy states that patients who miss 2 appointments in a 12 month rolling period are sent a warning letter and added to a register or list.

If a patient misses 3 appointments in a 12 month rolling period, The Grange Group Practice reserves the right to remove that patient from the list.

The DNA policy allows the Practice to remove patients who frequently fail to attend appointments.  This should result in greater availability of appointments for the rest of our patients.

How to cancel your appointment

The Grange Group Practice encourages patients to cancel appointments in advance if they are unable to attend.

This allows other patients to use the appointment slot.

There are many ways to cancel an appointment, including the following methods:

• Call us on 01484 428 282.
• Email us at [email protected]

What to do if you are removed from the practice list

Patients who are removed from the list are encouraged to register with another GP Practice as soon as possible, to prevent any gaps in treatment or care.

Under the Freedom of Information act patients have the right to access or view their medical record. Copies of records will occur a charge.

NHS England requires that the net earnings of doctors engaged in the practice is publicised, and the required disclosure is shown below.

However, it should be noted that the prescribed method of 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 judgment about GP earnings, nor to make any comparison with any other practice.

All GP Practices are required to declare the mean earnings (e.g. average pay) for GP’s working to deliver NHS services to patients in their practice.

The average GP pay for working in The Grange Group Practice in the last financial year was £43,359 before tax and national insurance.

This is for 2 full time GP’s and 7 part-time GP’s who worked in the Practice for more than 6 months.

The government has asked all GP Practices to make their patients aware they have a Named Accountable GP.  Here at the Grange Group Practice, we have a pooled list. This means you are registered with the Practice as a whole and can see the GP of your choice.

You do however have a “Usual GP.” This is the GP you are likely to see most often.  If you wish to know who your “Usual GP” is, please ask us when you are next in the surgery.

General Practice Data for Planning and Research (GDPR) Opt-Out Guidance

The data held in the GP medical records of patients is used every day to support health and care planning and research in England, helping to find better treatments and improve patient outcomes for everyone. NHS Digital has developed a new way to collect this data, called the General Practice Data for Planning and Research data collection.

You can choose to Opt-out of this data collection. You need to do this by the 30th of September (this has changed from the previous deadline of the 23rd of June). Choosing to opt-out will not affect your care.

What is data used for?

Data collected will be used to support a wide variety of research and analysis to help run and improve health and care services including:

• Informing and developing health and social care policy
• Planning and commissioning health and care services
• Taking steps to protect the public (including managing and monitoring the coronavirus pandemic)
• Enabling healthcare and scientific research

What data will NHS Digital collect?

This data will be shared from 1 July 2021. Data may be shared from the GP medical records about:

• any living patient registered at a GP practice in England when the collection started – this includes children and adults
• any patient who died after 1 July 2021, and was previously registered at a GP practice in England when the data collection started

NHS Digital will not collect patients’ names or addresses. Any other data that could directly identify patients (such as NHS Number, date of birth, full postcode) is replaced with unique codes which are produced by de-identification software before the data is shared with NHS Digital.

NHS Digital Will Collect:

• data about diagnoses, symptoms, observations, test results, medications, allergies, immunisations, referrals, recalls and appointments, including information about physical, mental and sexual health
• data on sex, ethnicity and sexual orientation
• data about staff who have treated patients

NHS Digital Does not collect:

• name and address (except for postcode, protected in a unique coded form)
• written notes (free text), such as the details of conversations with doctors and nurses
• images, letters and documents
• coded data that is not needed due to its age – for example medication, referral and appointment data that is over 10 years old
• coded data that GPs are not permitted to share by law – for example certain codes about IVF treatment, and certain information about gender re-assignment

Opting Out:

Type 1 Opt-out

If you do not want NHS Digital to collect any of your data you can complete a Type-1 opt-out form. Please complete the form below and send it to the practice, or visit the practice to collect and fill out a paper copy.

Type One Opt-Out Form

National Data Opt-out

To Opt-out of NHS Digital sharing your information with other organisations, you can complete a National Data Opt-out by following this link:

https://www.nhs.uk/your-nhs-data-matters/

If you have any further questions, please read the below GDPR Opt-Out FAQ Document:

GDPR Data Opt-Out FAQ

Prescribing Drugs of Concern for New Patients

A controlled substance is generally a drug or chemical whose manufacture, possession, or use is regulated by the government because of the potential for abuse or addiction. Such drugs include those classified as narcotics, stimulants, depressants, hallucinogens, and cannabis. Many of our patients require strong, potentially addictive medication to help manage their condition(s). Of concern are ‘drugs of dependence ’(e.g. opioid medications and benzodiazepines, gabapentinoids, sleeping tablets), particularly when these are prescribed on an on-going basis.

Due to increasing reports of abuse of prescription drugs and patient behavioral problems, The Grange Medical Practice has established a policy to ensure best practice management of your condition, while reducing the risk of problems with drug prescriptions.

There are many other treatment options and many people find Live well With Pain a very helpful website to support patients.  There is an increasing evidence base that the best way to manage chronic pain is not through medication. 

If you are a new patient to the practice: 

• It may take time to get accurate medical information about your condition. Until such information is available, your GP may choose not to prescribe any medication. It is our policy that GPs do not prescribe drugs of dependence until they have a full clinical picture. 
• Your new GP may decide not to continue prescribing a medication previously prescribed for you. It may be determined that such a medication is not suitable. It is our policy that GPs do not prescribe drugs of dependence if they feel that previous prescriptions were inappropriate. 
• Your new GP will evaluate your condition and only prescribe a strength necessary for you. This may be different to the drug you had prescribed at your previous GP Practice. 

General practice standards: 

1. If the decision to prescribe is taken after a shared discussion of goals, plans, risks and benefits, you may be required to confirm your consent in writing. 

1. You will be asked to complete a Medication Management Plan: Treatment Agreement that will detail our practice’s expectations when prescribing drugs of dependence. This agreement details your responsibilities as a patient taking a drug of dependence; any prescriptions issues; advice on taking your medications; how we will monitor your care; and the standards of behaviour that are expected. 

1. Patients may need to acknowledge that their care requirements may be complex, and that referral for on-going care for all or part of your healthcare may be required. It is our practice policy that patient care is matched with the level of complexity. 

1. Patients are reminded that we have a zero tolerance on issues relating to staff abuse. 

Read/Download our GDPR Privacy Notice

This section explains why the GP Practice collects information about you and how that information may be used.

The health care professionals who provide you with care maintain records about your health and any treatment or care you have received previously (e.g. NHS Trust, GP Surgery, Walk-in clinic, etc.). These records help to provide you with the best possible healthcare. Please see the Privacy Notice for Patients, Covid19 Privacy Notice and the Young Patient Privacy Notice, the fair processing notice for Greater Huddersfield Clinical Commissioning Group for further information.

There is a new Central NHS Computer System called the Summary Care Record (SCR). The Summary Care Record is meant to help emergency doctors and nurses help you when you contact them when the surgery is closed. Initially, it will contain just your medications and allergies.

When contacting the surgery, we ask that our patients behave appropriately and respect our colleagues and other patients..

We understand that when patients are unwell they need to be dealt with as quickly as possible, and we have processes in place to make sure patients are seen by the right clinician, at the right time.

Our colleagues are here to help, and it is unacceptable to abuse them in any way.  The Zero Tolerance Policy is in place to protect our colleagues and our patients from inappropriate behavior and gives the Practice the right to remove patients who behave in an unacceptable manner.

Inappropriate behavior can cause undue stress for our colleagues, and other patients.  This is not tolerated by the Practice.

Examples of inappropriate behavior include:

• Foul and Abusive Language
• Aggressive Behavior
• Shouting
• Inappropriate Comments
• Confrontational Behaviour

Patients are advised to speak to a member of the management team if they are unhappy with their experience at the Practice.

Overview of the Zero Tolerance Policy

Colleagues and/or patients report incidents to the management team and a decision is made to decide if the patient(s) involved should be sent a warning letter or be removed from the practice.

If a warning letter is sent to the patient(s) about the incident, the patient(s) involved are entitled to write a response detailing their version of events regarding the incident.

In the event of a serious incident, a patient may be removed immediately from the practice.

If you are removed from the practice, you should register at another practice as soon as possible to prevent any gaps in your care.