At Ipswich Dental Surgery, it is very important to us that we meet your needs and expectations. The patient journey is at the heart of all that we do and we try to ensure that all our patients are satisfied with their experience of our service.

If you are unhappy with your experience for any reason, you can raise a concern, or make a complaint. There are different ways of doing this which depend on issues such as whether your care was provided under the NHS or privately.

If you have a complaint about one of our practices, we ask that it is brought to the attention of the Practice Manager in the first instance, who can promptly address your needs.

What we aim to do:

1. It is our aim to try to resolve any concerns locally at practice level and the Practice Manager is responsible for dealing with and investigating all patient complaints.

2. An easy way of expressing your concerns is by filling in our concerns/complaints form, which is available upon request from our Practice Managers.

3. If you require assistance with making a complaint, patients may wish to contact the Independent Health Complaints Advocacy (IHCA).

4. If a complaint is about any aspect of clinical care or associated charges, it will normally be referred to the dentist for their comments, and perhaps individual, responses.

5. The dentists are responsible for their own clinical activity and we ensure that they are adequately insured and indemnified by their own insurance companies whilst they are practising at our practices.

6. We will acknowledge any complaint within three working days of receipt of the complaint, either verbally, or in writing. With our patient’s agreement, we will seek to investigate the complaint and aim to provide a response within 10 working days of the complaint being received.

7. In some cases, it is not possible to provide a response within 10 working days, as it may be necessary to fully investigate all aspects of the complaint and obtain comments from the dentists and/or other professionals involved in the treatment or care. If it is not possible to provide a response within 10 working days, we will inform the patient, in a timely manner, of any unavoidable delays.

8. If complaining on behalf of someone, please note that we will need their written express consent to share their confidential information.

9. In order to request patient records, a request can be made to the Practice Manager, who will follow the guidelines set out by the Data Protection Act, to release these. The simplest way to request records is to complete our Records Request Form.

If after speaking to the practice team, you would like to further discuss any issues, your options to complain are as follows:

Step 1

If your complaint is in relation to NHS treatment that you have received, then please contact:

NHS Commissioning Board
PO Box 16738
Redditch
B97 9PT

Tel : 0300 3112233
Email: nhscommissioningboard@hscic.gov.uk

If your complaint relates to private treatment that you have received, then please contact:

Dental Complaints Service
Stephenson House
2 Cherry Orchard Road
Croydon
CR0 6BA

Telephone: 020 8253 0800 
Email: www.dentalcomplaints.org.uk

Step 2

If you are unhappy with the responses received from the NHS Commissioning Board then you can take up your issues with the Health Service Parliamentary Ombudsman:

Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman
Millbank Tower Millbank London
SW1P 4QP

Tel : 0345 015 4033
Website: www.ombudsman.org.uk