Confidential patient data will be shared within the health care team at the practice and with other health care professionals to whom a patient is referred. Those individuals have a professional and contractual duty of confidentiality.

Confidential and identifiable information relating to patients will not be disclosed to other individuals without their explicit consent, unless it is a matter of life and death or there is a serious risk to the health and safety of the patients or it is overwhelmingly in the public interest to do so.

In these circumstances the minimum identifiable information that is essential to serve a legal purpose may be revealed to another individual who has a legal requirement to access the data for the given purpose.

That individual will also have a professional and/or contractual duty of confidentiality. Data will otherwise be anonymised if possible before disclosure if this would serve the purpose for which data is required.

You have a right to expect a high standard of care from our practice and we will try at all times to provide the very best care possible within the resources available.

In order to assist us in this we require that you take full responsibility for ensuring that you do not abuse the service. For example, it is your responsibility to ensure that you keep medical appointments and follow the medical advice given. In addition, if you feel that your medical problem is complicated, or you have more than one problem to discuss with your doctor, we would suggest that you consider making more than one appointment. Please remember that your appointment is for you alone and your doctor will not be able to give medical advice to anyone accompanying you unless they have made a separate appointment.

Very occasionally a practice/patient relationship breaks down completely. In this situation the patient may choose to register with a different practice. The practice also has the right to remove that patient from their list. This would generally only follow a warning that had failed to remedy the situation and we would normally give the patient a specific reason for the removal.

You have the right to express a preference of practitioner when you make an appointment.

The NHS operates a Zero Tolerance Policy with regard to violence and abuse and the practice has the right to remove violent patients form the list with immediate effect in order to safeguard practice staff, patients and other persons.

Violence in this context includes actual or threatened physical violence or verbal abuse which leads to fear for a person’s safety.

In this situation we are obliged to notify the patient in writing of their removal from the list and record in the patient’s medical records the fact of the removal and circumstances leading to it. West Hertfordshire NHS is then responsible for providing further medical care for such patients.

We welcome comments and suggestions on our service. If we fail to provide the highest care possible, please make any observations known to our practice manager who will, where appropriate, use our complaints procedure to try to correct the problem.

All our staff are here to help you.