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Change of Name, Address or Telephone Number

Please notify the surgery as soon as possible if your name changes, you move to a new address or change your phone no. If your contact details change, please complete this form, and either hand it in to the surgery, or email it as an attachment to FV-UHB.aberfoyle-repeats@nhs.net, or FV-UHB.buchlyvie-repeats@nhs.net

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Private / Non NHS Services

Certain services such as private sick notes, insurance claim forms and some medical examinations are not covered by the NHS. Charges are made in line with BMA (British Medical Association) recommendations. Fees are displayed in the Waiting Room.

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Hospital Consultants Letters

Letters sent by consultants to the surgery after your appointment with them can take several weeks to arrive. You may wish to check that we have received the appropriate letter before attending the surgery. Likewise, if a consultation is dependent on eg an X-ray result, please check that this is available first.

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No Smoking

We support the Health Board NO SMOKING policy and would request that all our patients observe the No Smoking rule within the surgery premises and grounds.

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Suggestions / Complaints

Our aim is to give you the best service possible and we welcome any suggestions or comments you may have. If you are unhappy about any aspect of our service please speak to the practice manager or one of the doctors. The practice has a formal inhouse complaints procedure, further details of which can be obtained at reception.

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Patients’ Charter

The practice normally agrees to accept patients requesting to join its list who are eligible to be accepted. We do not discriminate on the grounds of: race, gender, social class, age, religion, sexual orientation, appearance, disability or medical condition.

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Practice Charter

These are the local standards set within this practice for the benefit of our patients. It is our duty to give you treatment and advice. Following discussion with you, you will receive the most appropriate care, given by suitably qualified people. No care or treatment will be given without your informed consent. In the interest of your health it is important for you to understand all the information given to you. Please ask us questions if you are unsure of anything.

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Patients Rights and Responsibilities

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Your Medical Records And Confidentiality

In order to comply fully with the Data Protection Act 1998 we need to make sure that our patients are aware of how we handle their medical records, both as paper files and electronic databases.

Medical Files

Doctors need to keep notes about any diagnoses, test results, treatments, including drug prescriptions, etc., to provide better health care in the future, and also in case of legal dispute. These notes are usually paper files, stored in a records room, but are now often held as electronic records, which are more flexible and easily found, but raise new issues of security and confidentiality.

Nurses and other health professionals may also need access to these records, and will add their own notes as part of the overall healthcare provision. Dispensers, secretaries, receptionists, and other clerical staff will need access to some of the records in order to do administrative tasks, such as booking appointments and communicating with patients and other parts of the NHS. Many patients would not be aware of this.

We provide information by law (e.g. Communicable Diseases Act 1978 - to prevent the outbreak of certain highly contagious diseases) to protect patients and the public at large.

How we protect the information

The sensitivity of patient information should be well understood within the NHS. All staff and contractors are trained to understand their duty of confidentiality to patients, and have this written in their contracts. We keep paper and electronic records securely to prevent unauthorised access or misuse. Wherever practicable, we also remove references to personal details such as name and address, and often restrict it further to reduce the chances of anyone identifying a record as relating to an individual.

Staff, Relatives and Friends

We are able to limit access to individual medical records so that only the doctor can access your medical information if you wish. Please discuss with the doctor.

Planning

We need to be able to plan ahead about treatments, patient numbers, etc., but this uses summary information, not personal information.

Activity and Accounting information

In order to manage the NHS, information about treatments, drugs prescribed, numbers of patients seen, etc., is needed, and hospitals and general practices provide this information in returns to various central bodies. Such information usually has personal details such as name and address removed. These returns are checked against patient files to prevent fraud as part of the NHS’s statutory obligations. NHS Fraud Office will contact patients to get their consent before records are checked.

Medical Research

Some medical research will involve patients directly (especially if taking part in clinical trials) when the circumstances will be fully explained, and the patient’s express consent required. If they do not consent, then they will not be included in the trial. Other research only requires access to medical statistics, and can greatly improve our understanding of health and how to treat patients more effectively. Generally researchers only need information about groups of people, so that no individual information is apparent. In some cases they need individual records, but wherever possible these are provided anonymously (so individuals cannot be identified).

If researchers need access to individual medical files, we will ask patients first for their consent (and before this the researchers must present their case before an Ethics Committee to check that their research is appropriate and worthwhile). Rarely, it may not be practicable (or even possible) to contact individuals for their consent, in which case the researchers must make their case before a Confidentiality Committee to show that there is enough benefit to the public at large to justify this.

Teaching

Some medical files are needed to teach student clinicians about rare cases.

Managing the Data

We need to move electronic information between systems, extracting the data and modifying it for the next system. Occasionally, tests will need to be made on the data to check that it has been transferred correctly. This will only be done under carefully controlled confidentiality.

Other Agencies

The NHS is not the only government service to provide care e.g. Social Services, and it will be necessary for us to provide other agencies with appropriate information, but only with the patient’s express consent (or that of their relatives if the patient is too ill).

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