Lower Clapton General Practice

At Lower Clapton General Practice, we are here to provide safe, high-quality healthcare for everyone in our community.

Our Aims

• To offer accessible, friendly, and professional medical services for all our patients.
• To support people in staying healthy and managing long-term conditions.
• To provide care that is respectful, inclusive, and centred on your needs.
• To work closely with hospitals, community services, and other professionals to give you the best possible care.

What We Offer

• Appointments for general medical advice and treatment.
• Ongoing care for long-term conditions such as diabetes, asthma, and heart disease.
• NHS health checks, vaccinations, and screening services.
• Care for children, including health checks and immunisations.
• Maternity care, family planning, and women’s health services.
• Mental health support and signposting to specialist services.
• Minor surgery and diagnostic tests (where appropriate).

Who We Care For

We provide services to:

• All patients registered with the practice.
• Temporary residents in our catchment area.
• People of all ages, backgrounds, and health needs.

Our Values

We are committed to being:

• Safe – protecting our patients at all times.
• Caring – treating everyone with kindness and respect.
• Inclusive – welcoming and supporting all members of our community.
• Responsive – listening to your needs and acting on feedback.
• Committed – always working to improve the services we provide.

This policy information is coming.

The NHS has a zero tolerance policy of all violence and aggression. This policy is for the protection of all NHS staff, but also for the protection of other patients, their families, visitors, etc. In order to ensure that this zero tolerance approach is adhered to, it is essential to have robust policies and procedures in place.

In General Practice, this will need to cover a variety of situations in which incidents could occur. Generally speaking the majority of patients behave in acceptable or manageable ways, however the incidence of excessively aggressive or violent attacks in the GP practice is increasing.

The practice recognises that there can be contributory reasons for patients behaving in difficult or challenging ways, however, where this tips over into aggression or violence, the practice will adopt a zero tolerance approach.

Read our Late Patient Policy

Lower Clapton General Practice privacy notice

Update on the national planned extraction of data from patient records for planning and research.

Many patients have expressed concern over the extraction of data by NHS Digital. A new system was scheduled to take place on the 1^st September but has now been postponed without a date being set for when it will take place. This is to allow NHS England and the government to make changes in the light of concerns that have been expressed and to engage with patients and doctors.

This information is important to the country and has been used to plan the response to the Covid 19 pandemic, including the vaccine roll-out and to understand how to support patients suffering from ‘long Covid’.

However, the new data extraction will only now take place, when;

You, as a patients have the means to delete your data from a data upload, even after a data collection has taken place. You will be also able to opt-out from any future collections. The way that you will do this is being made more simple.

The present back-log of opt-outs expressed by patients, whether at practice level or on-line ( with NHS Digital) have been cleared.

A “Trusted Research Environment” has been developed and implemented within NHS Digital itself.

This mean that the data collected will only be accessed within this environment and that it will not be able to be copied or transported outside of the environment. Data can only be copied and transferred outside of this secure environment, if you, as a patient have given your explicit consent; e.g. for a specific research study.

NHS Digital promises that:

• The data extraction will continue to be both pseudonymised, i.e. the data identifying you as you does not reach NHS Digital and will be encrypted by GP System suppliers.
• Wants to improve its communications:
  1. By continuing to listen to patients and other stakeholders,
  2. Will consult via series of events that aim to explain the programme and engage in co-design with stakeholders as to how the programme will move forward.
  3. Will demonstrate how public feedback is being used to shape how the data is collected and how the data informs research and planning across the NHS

Jo Churchill, the under-secretary of State for Primary Care promises that:

“Once the data is collected, it will only be used for the purposes of improving health and care. Patient data is not for sale and never will be for sale.”

The full text of his letter is available here.

Lower Clapton General Practice

(Last updated: Aug-21)

 

We aim to provide the best care we can to our patients. Where things go wrong or where we fail to deliver the standard of care we aspire to provide, we would like to hear about it. If you have any comments, suggestions, concerns, complaints or compliments about our service please let us know. There is a suggestion box in the waiting room where you can leave comments or feedback, but if you want to make a formal complaint please let a member of staff know.

 

You can discuss your concern, feedback or complaint with any member of staff that you feel comfortable with, however, if you wish to put your response in writing please address it to Aasiya Hafesji, the Business Manager, at the address below.

 

We treat complaints very positively and we are grateful that patients bring concerns to our attention so we can improve our service. We will do our best to resolve your complaint and put things right where things have gone wrong. We will not treat you any differently if you complain. We may implement changes to how we run our practice as a result of your complaint.

 

How to complain at our surgery

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 you wish to complain, we would like you to let us know as soon as possible. This will enable us to establish what happened more easily.

 

Concerns and complaints should be addressed to Aasiya Hafesji, the Business Manager.

 

You can complain in any of the following ways:

1. By email:  lower.claptongp@nhs.net
2. By writing to:

Aasiya Hafesji, Business Manager

The Portico, 34 Linscott Road, London, E5 0RD

 

You may ask for an appointment in order to discuss your concerns. The complaints procedure will be explained to you and make sure your concerns are dealt with promptly. It will be a great help if you are as specific as possible about your concerns. If you would like to have a copy of our complaints procedure, please ask.

 

What we shall do

We shall acknowledge your complaint within three working days. You will be given an opportunity to discuss how you would like the complaint to be dealt with, whether by telephone, or a meeting with staff concerned and agree the timescale involved. We aim to try and resolve complaints as soon as possible. We shall then be in a position to offer you an explanation, or a meeting with the people involved. When we look into complaints, we shall aim to:

• Find out what happened and what went wrong;
• Let you know the outcome in writing or by telephoning you directly.
• Make sure you receive an apology, where this is appropriate;
• Identify what we can do to make sure the problem doesn’t happen again.
• Feedback to the practice team, where this is appropriate.
• Let you know how we have changed practice procedures as a result of your complaint, if this has taken place.

 

If you complain verbally we shall contact you by phone or discuss matters in person and try to resolve your complaint by the end of the next working day. If this is not possible or if the complaint is not resolved we will write to you to acknowledge your complaint with the details.

 

The staff who deal with complaints and timescales

• The business manager oversees all the practice complaints. Dr Jenifer King is the GP Partner who leads on patient complaints and will normally contact the patient involved.
• We aim to resolve complaints within a reasonable amount of time, usually within 10 working days; however, we accept this may not always be possible if a detailed investigation is needed. The patient will be kept informed of any delays.

 

Complaining on behalf of someone else

Please note that we keep strictly to the rules of medical confidentiality. If you are complaining on behalf of someone else, we have to know that you have his or her permission to do so. A note signed by the person concerned will be needed, unless they are incapable (because of illness) of providing this.

 

Further advice and support or if you are dissatisfied with our response to your complaint

We hope we can resolve your complaint internally. We believe this will give us the best chance of putting right whatever has gone wrong and an opportunity to improve our practice complaints procedure and our practice. But this does not affect your right to approach the NHS commissioning board if you feel you cannot raise your complaint with us or you are dissatisfied with the result of our investigation.

 

Help to make a Complaint

If you require advocacy support in relation to your complaint or if you are not happy with our response to your complaint or simply wish to obtain further advice and support you can contact:

 

Independent Health Complaint Advocacy (IHCA)

The Advocacy Project can help and Hackney residents who wish to make a complaint about any health and care services

 

Tel: 020 3960 7920

referrals@advocacyproject.org.uk

www.advocacyproject.org.uk

 

If you feel your complaint cannot be resolved locally with the practice, you can contact NHS England:

By post to:

NHS England
PO Box 16738
Redditch
B97 9PT

By email to: england.contactus@nhs.net

If you are making a complaint please state: ‘For the attention of the complaints team’ in the subject line.

By telephone: 0300 311 22 33

 

If you have any comment or complaint about a hospital, mental health or community trust please contact them directly.

 

Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman     

If you are not satisfied following all attempts to resolve your complaint locally, you have the right to ask for an independent review through the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO). This must be done within 12 months of this response letter. Their contact details are:

Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman     

https://www.ombudsman.org.uk/about-us/contact-us

Tel: 0345 015 4033

 

Healthwatch Hackney

If you experience difficulties in contacting any of the organisations above, or would like to share your experiences of any health and care services, please contact Healthwatch Hackney

 

0203 960 7458/

Free phone number: 0808 164 7664

info@healthwatchhackney.co.uk

 

You can also find further information in Hackney’s Health and Social Care Complaints Charter

From 1 April 2015, practices were required under the GMS contract, to allocate a named accountable GP to all patients, including children.  All patients registered before 1 April 2015 were allocated a GP before the end of June 2015.

Please ask the reception staff or your doctor for the name of your accountable GP.  If you would prefer to be allocated to a different GP, please contact the Practice and we will do our best to accommodate your wishes.

All new patients who registered after 1 April 2015 should be informed about their named GP at registration.

Please note: You can still make an appointment to see any doctor in the practice.

This statement of intent sets out our plans to provide on-line facilities for our patients by 31^st March 2015 in line with the requirements of the national GP Contract.

These facilities are:

•   The facility to book appointments online
•   The facility to request repeat prescriptions online
•   The facility to view basic information from your medical record online
•   Automated uploads of Summary Care records
•   Electronic transfer of patient records via GP2GP record transfer

The new requirements are outlined below, together with our current position:

Electronic appointment booking

Practices are required to promote and offer the facility for all patients who wish to book, view, amend, cancel & print appointments on-line

•   We currently offers the facility for appointment booking on-line 

Electronic requesting of repeat prescriptions

Practices are required to promote and offer the facility for all patients who wish to order on-line, view and print a list of their repeat prescriptions for necessary drugs, medicines or appliances

•   We currently offer the facility for electronic requesting of repeat prescriptions 

Patient access to view summary information of their GP record on-line

Practices are required to promote and offer the facility for patients over the age of 16 years to view on-line, export or print any summary information from their record, relating to medications, allergies and adverse reactions.

• We currently offer the facility for patients to view their summary information from their GP record on-line

Automatic uploads of Summary Care Record information

Practices are required to enable automated uploads of any changes made to their patients Summary Care Record (SCR) on a daily basis.

Having your Summary Care Record available will provide key information about medication you may be taking, and any medication that you have a recorded allergy or adverse reaction towards.  This information will only be provided to clinical staff treating you that do not have access to your full medical record.

• We are currently providing automated uploads of Summary Care Records on a daily basis.

(Please note that automatic SCR uploads will not be provided for patients who have chosen to opt-out of SCR)

GP2GP electronic health record transfers

Practices are required to utilise the GP2GP facility for the transfer of patient records between practices, when a patient registers or de-registers.

The GP2GP facility provides the ability for patient records to be transferred quickly and securely from one practice to the next as a patient re-registers or de-registers & ensures that the patient record can be integrated as appropriate to ensure there is continuity of the record over time.

•   GP2GP facility has been enabled

Lower Clapton Group Practice is fully compliance with all aspects of this national requirement.