Everyone at the Downland Practice tries to work together with our patients to provide the best possible care. We want our service to be safe, effective, caring, responsive and well led.

We are committed to:

• Treating patients and carers with courtesy and respect
• Involving patients in all decisions about their treatment and ensuring informed consent is given prior to any procedure.
• Ensuring absolute confidentiality of medical records within the limits of the law
• Abiding by legal and regulatory obligations including Data Protection and Health and Safety regulations.

We aim to:

• Offer our patients an appointment with a doctor within three working days
• See patients who consider their condition to be medically urgent on the same day
• Answer the telephone promptly
• Keep our patients informed if their appointment time is more than 30 minutes behind schedule
• Print repeat prescriptions within three working days of request.
• Provide patients with access to their medical records as the law permits subject to the recommended fee.

We welcome comments and suggestions about our service and encourage patient involvement through our Patient Representation Group.

We ask patients to:

• Treat all staff with respect
• Keep appointments or provide as much notice as possible if there is a need to cancel or rebook
• Only request a home visit if their medical condition prevents them from attending surgery
• Only contact the out of-hours service if their medical condition prevents them from waiting until the next surgery
• Inform the surgery of any changes of name address or telephone number. (This is your responsibility and important if we, or specialist services, need to contact you about urgent medical matters)
• Request repeat prescriptions, preferably online (when patients register for this service) or by returning the repeat prescription form, but not by telephone or email.
• Take responsibility for the timely ordering of their repeat prescription, respecting the processing period takes a minimum of three full working days. This helps to ensure that our patients receive their medication in a timely manner
• Make any requests for access to medical records to their named GP in writing.

We want to work with our patients to provide the best possible service.