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View our Practice Booklet:
Our
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In the 1920s Dr John Dow, brought up and trained in Scotland, joined Dr Banks' practice in Redditch. At this time Redditch was a small market town. He bought a house that became the Surgery, and another Scottish doctor, Dr Mitchell, joined him.
Dr Dow's sister worked as a practice dispenser. Dr John Dow had three sons, all of whom became doctors. Two of them, Tom and Iain, joined the family practice, whilst Bill headed for Western Australia.
Whilst Redditch was developing as a "new town", the practice was obliged to move premises twice, but the doctors and staff (and patients) stuck together. In 1991 Tom’s son, John, succeeded his Father and Dr Iain retired shortly after. John’s sister now also works in the practice. The practice moved to a new. Purpose-built premises in 1995.
We enjoy working in a friendly atmosphere. Things are very different from the time of the first Dr John, but we are keen to maintain a family-based service, with a high quality of modern medical care.
The practice is open weekdays from 8.30 a.m. to 6.00pm. Doctors are available at varying times during the week mornings and afternoons. Please telephone to secure a suitable time.
We have now a number of evening and Saturday morning appointments available aimed at helping people who find difficulty getting to see us during normal hours. These can be booked through reception in the usual way. Please note we are unable to deal with urgent appointment requests during these times. These should be directed to the usual out of hours service.
If
you have an urgent medical problem when the Surgery is closed, advice or medical
attention can be obtained through the Worcestershire Out of Hours Service run by
Harmoni.. This service has a base at the Alexandra Hospital. They will either
advise you or arrange a consultation as necessary. You must always telephone before attending.
Please ring: 0300 1233211
Alternatively
advice can be obtained from the national advice line, NHS Direct. Please
contact: http://www.nhsdirect.nhs.uk/
or 0845 4647.
We always try to give you the best services possible, but there may be times when you feel this has not happened. The following information explains what to do if you have a complaint about the service we provide for you.
If you wish to make a complaint please phone or write to our practice manager, Mrs. Pauline Waddy. She will take full details of your complaint and decide how best to undertake the investigation.
Please note that we have to respect our duty of confidentiality to patients and a patient's written consent may be necessary if a complaint is not made by that patient in person.
We think it is important to deal with complaints swiftly, so you will normally be offered an appointment for a meeting to discuss matters within 7 working days. Occasionally, if we have to make a lot of enquiries, it may take a little longer, but we will keep you informed.
We will try to address your concerns fully, provide you with an explanation and discuss any action that may be needed. We hope that at the end of the meeting, you will feel satisfied that we have dealt with the matter thoroughly. However, if this is not possible and you wish to continue with your complaint, we will direct you to the appropriate authorities who will be able to help you.
The above practice procedure is not able to deal with questions of legal liability or compensation, nor does it affect your right to make a formal complaint to the Primary care Trust if you wish.
The appropriate contact addresses for the Worcestershire PCT is as follows:-
Patient Relations Manager
NHS Worcestershire
Ground Floor, West Wing
Wildwood
Wildwood Drive
Worcester WR5 2LG
Tel - 01905 760091
We ask for information about you so that you can receive the best possible care and treatment. We keep this information, together with details of your care, to ensure that your doctor or nurse has accurate and up to date information. It may also be needed if we see you again.
There are times when we have to pass on information about you to other people, such as hospitals, Social Services, or the Health Authority. This is always done confidentially or by removing your identifying details when they are not essential.
Everyone working for the NHS has a legal duty to maintain the highest level of confidentiality about patient information.
If at any time you would like to know more about how we use your information, you can speak to our Practice Manager.
This is a growing concern in the NHS. Violent and abusive patients will be reported to the police and struck-off their GP's list.
The NHS Security Management Service (NHS SMS) was created in April 2003 with the policy and operational responsibility for the management of security within the NHS.
The NHS SMS has launched a comprehensive strategy to better protect staff and property in the NHS, with a particular emphasis on tackling violence.
This replaces work previously undertaken under the NHS Zero Tolerance campaign.
For more information, please log onto the NHS SMS section of the following website:
Thank you to all the patients that filled questionnaires out this year. We have received the results back and we are grateful that the majority of people appear to be very satisfied with their experiences within the surgery. Having analysed them there are a number of areas that were highlighted and we intend to address these.
Time spent in the waiting room
Some consultations inevitably run over the allocated 10 minutes particularly with complex issues. We have built in a gap in some surgeries that tend to run over to enable “catch up “ time meaning hopefully patients will be seen as near their appointment time as possible.
We plan to reduce “interruptions” to the consultations to a minimum by having strict guidelines about taking phone calls and queries during surgery.
We will try to ensure that if a doctor is running late we will provide those patients waiting with an idea of the likely delay.
We will ask people to be mindful that appointments are only 10 minutes and if there are a number of issues to discuss they be prepared to book a further appointment if necessary.
Ability to book appointments more than 48 hours ahead.
This is a difficult balancing act as the majority of appointments are kept to be available within 48 hours. We have tried to address this by increasing the pre- bookable appointment availability to 3 weeks ahead. Any more than this and we find an increase the proportion of patients failing to turn up.
We intend to keep a watch on the balance of those available up to 48 hours ahead and those that can be booked further ahead.
