Zero Tolerance

GP’S AND THEIR STAFF HAVE A RIGHT TO CARE FOR OTHERS WITHOUT FEAR OF BEING ATTACKED OR ABUSED.

We ask that you treat your doctors, nurses and practice staff with the same courtesy and respect with which they afford you.  Violent, aggressive or abusive patients may be refused medical treatment, reported to the police and may be struck off the GP’s list.

The NHS operate a zero tolerance policy with regard to violence and abuse and the practice has the right to remove violent patients from 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 will 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 the circumstances leading to it.

Rights & Responsibility

As a patient, you can expect …

  • To be treated with courtesy and with respect at all times
  • To have details about you, including your medical records and anything you say treated in confidence by all members of the practice team. Confidentiality applies to all patient consultations including under 16s and to all patient data. All practice staff are bound by practice rules of confidentiality.
  • To be given an explanation if your appointment is delayed
  • To be able to access information about your medical treatment
  • To be informed of services offered by the practice through the practice leaflet, website and newsletter
  • To be able to make queries, suggestions, compliments or complaints about the service and treatment you receive

As a patient, you have a responsibility …

  • To treat the doctors and staff with the courtesy and respect which you may expect to receive yourself
  • To inform the surgery of any change of contact address or telephone number
  • To attend appointments on time or give reasonable notice of cancellation and attend follow up appointments as requested
  • To request repeat prescriptions in good time
  • To tell clinical staff if you are uncertain or don’t understand any aspect of your treatment and need more information
  • To inform yourself about your health and keep up to date about your medication, illness and treatment
  • To take any medicines as advised and seek medical advice before stopping or changing treatment
  • To treat other patients with courtesy and respect

Commissioning policies for criteria-based clinical procedures

Not all treatments and medications are routinely funded on the NHS. This is because the effectiveness of certain procedures and medications can vary significantly amongst patients, so for some people treatments can be more harmful than they are helpful.

The NHS has a responsibility to make sure it is using its limited resources in a way that gives patients the most health benefits and best outcomes.

The main objective for having a clinical commissioning policy is to ensure that:

  • Patients receive appropriate, evidence-based health treatments in the right place, at the right time
  • Treatments that are routinely undertaken represent the most effective and cost- effective use of the limited resource available
  • Treatments with no or a very limited clinical evidence base are not routinely undertaken
  • Treatments with minimal health gain are restricted
  • The risk of avoidable harm is reduced.  With all surgical interventions, there is always a risk of complications and adverse effects which could be avoided
  • Clinicians are assisted in maintaining their professional practice in line with the changing evidence base
  • Available resources are maximized, and waste is avoided as ineffective care is poor value for money for the taxpayer and the NHS.

Every NHS Integrated Care Board (ICB) is responsible for determining the range and level of clinical/medical services provided to the public it serves. In doing so ICBs are legally obliged to develop and publish any policies it has adopted to determine the availability of specific treatments or procedures for the local population.

Lancashire and South Cumbria Integrated Care Board has a range of clinical commissioning policies which outline the treatments and procedures they fund and details of who may be eligible to receive them. A full list of existing policies can be found via the links below.

Lancashire and South Cumbria Integrated Care Board :: Commissioning policies (icb.nhs.uk)

Accessibility Statement

This website has been developed by EMIS Health and is run by the specified organisation. We want as many people as possible to be able to use this website. For example, that means you should be able to:

  • change colours, contrast levels and fonts
  • zoom in up to 300% without the text spilling off the screen
  • navigate most of the website using just a keyboard
  • navigate most of the website using speech recognition software
  • listen to most of the website using a screen reader (including the most recent versions of JAWS, NVDA and VoiceOver)

We’ve also looked to use ‘Plain English’ where possible in order to make the website text simple to understand.

AbilityNet has advice on making your device easier to use if you have a disability.

Keyboard navigation in Mac OS

For keyboard navigation to work in Mac OS an option has to be turned on:

System Preferences Keyboard  Shortcuts

In that panel is a check box labelled “Use keyboard navigation to move focus between controls”. Check that box and Restart your browser for the change to take effect.

How accessible this website is

Although we have used our reasonable efforts to make the website accessible to all we appreciate that some parts of this website are not currently fully accessible, in particular:

  • some of our downloadable documents may not fully accessible to screen reader software
  • there are a limited number of keyboard navigation issues including; menu navigation and notification acknowledgement
  • the site tagline styling may not be deemed to meet accessibility standards
  • table layout for opening times does not use the correct grid format to be deemed fully accessible

As part of our ongoing continuous improvement exercises we are working to further improve on the accessibility aspects of the site.

What to do if you cannot access parts of this website

If you need information on this website in a different format like accessible PDF, large print, easy read, audio recording or braille then please:

  • email: mysupport@emishealth.com
  • Call: 0845 124 5245

We will consider all requests and aim to get back to you within 5 working days.

Reporting accessibility problems with this website

We are always looking to improve the accessibility of this website. If you find any problems not listed on this page or identify ways that we can improve accessibility then please do call or email us to report the issue:

  • email mysupport@emishealth.com
  • call 0845 124 5245

Enforcement procedure

The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) is responsible for enforcing the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018 (the ”Accessibility Regulations”). If you have any concerns or issues with our site and are not happy with how we have responded to your concerns, then you may wish to contact the Equality Advisory and Support Service (EASS).

Alternatively, if you are based in Northern Ireland, please contact the Equalities Commission for Northern Ireland (ECNI).

Technical information about this website’s accessibility

EMIS Health are committed to making its websites accessible, in accordance with the Accessibility Regulations.

This website is partially compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1 AA standard, due to the non-compliances listed below.

Non-accessible content

The content listed below is non-accessible for the following reasons.

Content that is not within the scope of the Accessibility Regulations

PDFs and other documents

This site may contain older PDFs and Word documents that do not meet accessibility standards – for example, they may not be structured so that they are accessible to a screen reader. This does not meet WCAG 2.1 success criterion 4.1.2 (name, role value).

The Accessibility Regulations do not require us to fix PDFs or other documents published before 23 September 2018 if they are not essential to providing our services.

This site may contain elements that cannot be navigated through using a keyboard. This does not meet WCAG 2.1 success criterion 2.1.1 (keyboard).

Plans are in place to rectify these issues as soon as practicable.

Styling Issues

This site may contain elements of styling that are not deemed to be accessible. This does not meet WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.4 (distinguishable).

Plans are in place to rectify these issues as soon as practicable.

Disproportionate burden

Google Maps – There is a limit as to how far you can magnify the embedded Google Maps on our ‘contact us’ page. The code for this map is supplied by Google and we are unable to make amendments to it.

How we tested this website

This website was last tested on 8th February 2021. The test was carried out by the EMIS Health Service Team.

Site compliance was checked using a combination of manual testing and third party tools, including: