INFO ABOUT THE WHITEHOUSE SURGERY

We aim to provide each patient with sufficient information in a way that they can understand to allow them to make a decision about their care. We will use various communication tools to ensure that the patient understands what is being suggested. In our discussions with patients, we explore what they want to know to help them make their decisions and explain:

The Disability Discrimination Act 1995 gives people with disabilities rights to use and access services without being subjected to disability discrimination. It imposes a duty on service providers to make reasonable adjustments to their policies, practices and premises and provide auxiliary aids to improve accessibility of services for disabled people. With this in mind, the practice undertakes an audit of disability access provision at six monthly intervals and seeks feedback to help us make our services as accessible as possible.

Patients are invited to use our complaints and comments service. We operate a practice complaints procedure as part of the NHS system for dealing with complaints. Our complaints system adheres to national criteria. 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.

Personal information held by the practice about patients is and remains confidential. This cannot be passed to any third party, without the consent of the patient or a court order requiring this information to be released. Records about NHS treatment only may be released to the NHS England and to patient forums if this can be done in such a way that it is not possible to identify the patient. Philip Martin acts as the practice Data Controller and is responsible for ensuring information about patients remains confidential. Our philosophy of dentistry is to provide an excellent standard of care and service for our patients, within a friendly and caring environment.