Complaints

Complaints Procedure

CQC registered service providers strive to provide the best possible service for patients. We are not currently CQC regsitered but we aim to meet all their standards anyway. However, we recognise that sometimes you may feel that we have not met your needs.

If you have any complaint or concern about the service you have received from us you are entitled to ask for an explanation.

We operate an in-house complaints procedure to deal with your complaint. This procedure does not deal with matters of legal liability or compensation.

Our promise to you

We will:

  • Listen to your complaint or concern.

  • Respond by establishing a clear, appropriate plan of action, and provide you with relevant support and advice. 

  • Improve the service however we can.

How to make your complaint

We hope that we can resolve your problem easily and promptly, often at the time the problem arises 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 do so as soon as possible. This will enable us to establish what happened more easily.

Please make your complaint in writing to Karen Prideaux karen@heavens-gate.org.uk. If you would like assistance with making your complaint we can help you with the Complaint Form.

Please be assured that any complaint you make, written or verbal, will be treated in strict confidence and have no effect upon the level of treatment and care that you receive at the practice.

If you would prefer a family member, friend or advocate to make the complaint on your behalf, they may do so and we will work with them and yourself to resolve the problem. However, whilst we can receive a complaint on your behalf we cannot provide any medical information to a third party without your authority. To discuss or provide confidential information we would require a note signed and dated by you. We would be happy to assist you with this.

What happens next?

Your complaint will be acknowledged within two working days of receiving it. This may well be a phone call from Karen Prideaux to you (or your advocate) to make sure we fully understand your complaint.

We aim to make a full response to you within the next 21 working days. During that time we will conduct an investigation to find out what has happened and whether there is any action that can be taken to put things right. If at the end of those 21 days we are still conducting our investigations, we will notify you of the position and keep you fully informed until our investigations have been concluded.

As a result of our investigation we will:

  • Make sure you receive an apology

  • Find out what has happened and what went wrong

  • Make it possible for you to discuss the problem with those concerned, if you would like this

  • Keep you informed of our progress

  • Identify what we can do to make sure that problem does not happen again

Getting further help with your complaint

We hope that through our practice complaints procedure we can resolve your problem satisfactorily. We believe that this will give us the best chance to put the matter right with you and the opportunity to improve our services for all our patients. If, however, we are unable to resolve your complaint we will refer it to an external party.

The Care Quality Commission does not investigate complaints against practitioners, but you can contact them for the following purpose: “CQC want you to tell them about your experiences of care. It helps them to decide when, where and what to inspect, and to take action to prevent poor care happening to others in future. CQC also want to hear about good experiences of care. However, it is important to know that CQC cannot make complaints for you or take them up on your behalf because as a regulator the CQC does not have the powers to investigate or resolve them.”

Complaints about tongue-tie treatment can if you wish be dealt with by The Centre for

Effective Dispute Resolution (CEDR) which specialises in mediation and alternative dispute

resolution (ADR).

Please note that neither the Association of Tongue-tie practitioners nor the CQC deal with

complaints – formal complaints should be addressed to the practitioner in the first instance

The CQC does however like to receive feedback about care – both positive and negative.
Such feedback can be given at https://www.cqc.org.uk/give-feedback-on-care