Complaints Procedure

If you have a complaint or concern about the service you have received from the dentist or any of the staff working at this practice, please let us know. We operate a practice complaints procedure for dealing with complaints. Our complaints system meets national criteria.

How to complain

We hope that most problems can be resolved easily and quickly, often at the time they arise and with the person concerned. If your problem cannot be sorted out this way and you wish to make a complaint, please send us this in writing and we will respond to your complaint within three working days, enabling us to establish what happened more easily. If it is not possible to do that, please let us have details of your complaint within 12 months of the incident that caused the problem.

Complaints should be addressed to Aimee McMonagle – Complaints Manager, or Tara Diamond – Deputy Complaints Manager. It will be a great help if you are as specific as possible about your complaint. Complaints should be addressed to – Diamond Dental Care, 2 Ramsay Street, Clydebank, West Dunbartonshire, G81 3LF

What we will do:

We will acknowledge your complaint within 3 working days and aim to investigate your complaint within 28 working days of the date you raised it with us. We will then be in a position to offer you an explanation, or a meeting with the people involved. When we investigate your complaint, we will aim to:

• Find out what happened and what went wrong
• Make it possible for you to discuss the problem
• Identify what we can do to make sure the problem doesn’t happen again

Should a patient make a complaint or claim, we may need to provide information about the patient, and treatment they have received, to insurers, indemnifiers or legal advisers.

Complaining on behalf of someone else

Please note that we keep strictly to the rules of clinical confidentiality. If you are complaining on behalf of someone else, we must know that you have their permission to do so. A note signed by the person concerned will be needed, unless they are incapable (because of physical and mental illness) of providing this.

Complaining to NHS Scotland

We hope that if you have a problem, you will use our practice complaints procedure. We believe this will give us the best chance of putting right whatever has gone wrong and an opportunity to improve our practice. This does not affect your right to approach NHS Scotland if you feel you cannot raise your complaint with us, or you are dissatisfied with the result of our investigation. Should you wish to make a direct complaint to NHS Scotland please contact:

• NHS Inform: helpline 0800 22 44 88 Tel: 03003112233 (Mon – Fri 8am to 6pm,
  excluding Bank Holidays)
  Email: www.nhsinform.co.uk

• Scottish Public Services Ombudsman, 4 Melville Street, Edinburgh, EH3 7NS
  Website: www.spso.org.uk

• General Dental Council, 37 Wimpole Street, London, W1G 8DQ Tel: 0845 222 4141 or 020 7887 3800
  Email: www.gdc-uk.org