Practice Charter

Patient rights and responsibilities

You have a right to expect a high standard of medical care from our practice and we will try at all times to provide the very best care possible within the resources available.

In order to assist us in this we require that you take full responsibility for ensuring that you do not abuse the service. For example, it is your responsibility to ensure that you keep medical appointments and follow the medical advice given.

Very occasionally a practice/patient relationship breaks down completely. In this situation the patient may choose to register with a different practice. The practice also has the right to remove that patient from their list. This would generally only follow a warning that had failed to remedy the situation and we would normally give the patient a specific reason for the removal.

Violent patients - Zero tolerance

The NHS operates a Zero Tolerance Policy with regard to violence and abuse and the practice has the right to remove violent patients from the list with immediate effect in order to safeguard practice staff, patients and other persons.

Violence in this context includes actual or threatened physical violence or verbal abuse which leads to fear for a person’s safety.

In this situation we are obliged to notify the patient in writing of their removal from the list and record in the patient's medical records the fact of the removal and circumstances leading to it. The PCT is then responsible for providing further medical care for such patients.

Access to patient information

Confidential patient data will be shared within the practice heath care team and with other health care professionals to whom you are referred for care. Your data may be used by those clinical teams providing your care for the essential purpose of clinical audit.

Confidential patient data may also be required for the broader purposes of public health and audit, research, the provision of health care services, teaching and training. Data disclosed will be kept to the minimum required to serve the purpose and if possible will be anonymised before disclosure.

Confidential and identifiable patient information will not be disclosed otherwise without explicit consent, unless;

1 it is a matter of life and death or serious harm to you or to another individual
2 it is overwhelmingly in the public interest to do so
3 there is a legal obligation to do so.

In all of these circumstances the minimum identifiable information that is essential to serve the purpose may be revealed to someone with a legal entitlement to access the data for that purpose.

All individuals with access to your data have a professional and/or contractual duty of confidentiality.

If you are concerned about any of the ways in which your confidential data further information is available from the practice manager. You are entitled to register an objection, which will be respected if this is possible.