Making a compliment, complaint or concern

To see recent feedback from our patients, and to learn more about our Patient Participation Group (PPG), please click here.

Suffolk GP Federation aims to provide patients with the best care we can, but we will sometimes fall short of the mark. If you have any compliments, comments, concerns or complaints about our service we want to hear about them.

To find out more about our complaints and compliments please see our leaflet

If you would like to make a formal complaint please send these to:

Suffolk GP Federation
FAO
Governance Manager (Patient Experience)
Riverside Clinic
2 Landseer Road
Ipswich
IP3 0AZ

Or by email to Sgpfed.feedback@nhs.net

In all cases complaints will be dealt with under the Suffolk Federation’s complaints´ procedure and investigated by our central Governance Team. If you wish to make a complaint anonymously, we will still investigate, but will not be able to feed back to you.

The Federation’s complaints policy is available here. All complaints should be made within 12 months of the incident occurring or from when you knew there was an issue. Complaints made outside of this timeframe may not be investigated.

We also like to hear about when you have experienced good service from our staff. If you would like to tell us about your experience please email us at Sgpfed.feedback@nhs.net or call 0845 241 3313. All compliments are recorded on our systems and shared with our teams.

What we do next

When looking into a complaint we attempt to see what happened and why, to see if there is something we can learn from this, and make it possible for you to discuss the issue with those involved if you would like to do so.

When the investigations are complete, your complaint will be determined and a final response sent to you.

Your final response letter should include:

The investigation findings and reasons for decisions (where appropriate)
Where errors have occurred, an explanation and future measures to ensure it doesn’t occur again
An apology or explanation as appropriate
Advise on next-steps if you are still not satisfied
An explanation of your right to escalate the complaint and relevant contact details

Where your complaint involves more than one organisation (e.g. social services) we will show you where to make a complaint regarding the other organisation. It may be that separate investigations will be conducted by each organisation involved.

Complaining on behalf of someone else

If you wish to make a complaint and are not the patient involved, we will require written consent from the patient to confirm that we can liaise with a third party about their complaint.

Where the patient is incapable of providing consent due to illness or accident it may still be possible to deal with the complaint. In this instance, please contact our Governance Team who would be more than happy to give you advice on how to proceed on 0845 241 3313.

Please note that we are unable to discuss any issue relating to someone else without their express permission, which must be in writing, unless the circumstances above apply and on occasion we may still need to correspond directly with the patient.

If you dissatisfied with the outcome

The Health Service Ombudsman

We try our best to fully investigate your concerns and make positive changes as a result of your feedback, however we understand that sometimes you may require further clarification.

If you do not feel that we have been able to reach resolution then you can refer your complaint to the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO) who will consider whether it is necessary to undertake an independent review.

You can contact them by calling 0345 015 4033.