Indigo Medical Practice Charter

Indigo Medical is committed to promoting and maintaining the best quality health care for all our patients regardless of race, gender, religion or cultural beliefs. We hope to achieve this with your help and co-operation.

We aim to answer the telephone as quickly as possible. Please help us by avoiding busy times of the day for routine enquiries (e.g. Monday mornings).

We will always offer you an appointment the same day for any urgent medical problem, but please book routine appointments in advance (e.g. for a review of regular prescription).

We try to keep waiting times to a minimum but delays are sometimes unavoidable.

You can help by arriving for your appointment on time. Please be aware that if you arrive late for your booked appointment, the doctor may not be able to see you and you may be charged for it as a missed appointment. Please also be mindful that the doctor only has ten minutes for a routine appointment. If you wish your doctor to deal with a number of problems, then please book an appropriate length appointment or accept that it may not be possible to deal with all the problems and be asked to make a follow-up appointment. 

If you are unable to attend your appointment, please let us know by the close of play the day before your appointment so that the appointment can be offered to someone else, otherwise you will be charged a fee equivalent to that of a missed appointment. If you are signed up to receive appointment reminders via text message, please be aware that you are still responsible for ensuring that you turn up or cancel your appointment as above. Non-receipt of text message reminder is not accepted as a valid reason for not arriving for your appointment, or cancelling in line with our cancellation policy, and will still result in a charge being made as outlined above.

If you are too ill to come to the surgery, please try to let us know before 10.00 am. We provide home visits to those who are housebound and for seriously ill patients.

The surgery is open all day to answer your queries and to make appointments.

Please do not telephone outside surgery hours unless you require urgent medical treatment.

We can arrange for you to see your medical records (subject to the limitations of the law). Please ask at Reception. You can help keep these up to date by informing us of any changes in your details, especially your address and telephone number.

We welcome suggestions and constructive criticism. Please contact our Practice Manager who will deal with any complaints. Please see our practice leaflet ‘Compliment or Complaint’ for further details.

We take patient confidentiality extremely seriously. Everyone working at Indigo Medical has a legal duty to keep information about you confidential. All your personal and medical details are kept secret and will not be released unless you give your permission, with the following exceptions:

With the consent of the patient, e.g. if you require a medical report or your records are to be sent to a third party, such as a solicitor or insurance company.

When letters are sent to other medical personnel i.e. when a referral to a hospital or specialist is made. However, they will also keep your information entirely confidential.

If we think your health, wellbeing and safety are at risk, we may be obliged to tell someone else, for example, Social Services or other agencies. If this is necessary, the Doctor or Nurse must tell you first before passing on any information. 

If the law requires it, e.g. in notifying certain illnesses in order to protect the health of the public generally.

Our practice provides confidential help, information and support. Even if you are under 16, doctors and nurses still have to keep anything you tell them privately, just as they would for an adult.

We have a complaints procedure for dealing with any complaints you may have. If you would like a copy of the procedure, please ask at Reception.

We hope to be able to sort out your complaint as and when it happens, so please tell us straight away if you have a problem with our service and we will do our best to help. If your complaint has not been fully answered please ask for it to be passed to our Practice Manager. If they are not in the building, please leave a phone number and they will call you back as soon as possible.

Any written complaints will be acknowledged within five working days and we will then investigate and send you a full written reply within a further two weeks.

We take all comments, complaints and suggestions very seriously as we are continually striving to improve our service to our patients.

If you would like to send us your feedback please fill in our patient survey form