Ambleside Road, Keswick, Cumbria CA12 4DB
Tel: 017687 72025 (24 Hours)

Practice opening hours:
8:30am to 6:00pm on weekdays

Disabled access
Our premises have full facilities, including parking and toilet for the disabled. Guide dogs are welcome.

Registration
To register as a patient ask at reception for details. Newly registered patients will be invited for a consultation within 6 months of registering.

If you wish to choose to see a particular doctor for some or all medical conditions please let the receptionist know and she will note this in your medical records. We will always try to ensure that this is possible, but there may be occasions when it is not.

Attendance at surgeries
Patients should telephone for an appointment to be seen at the surgery during normal opening hours.
you may telephone to speak to a doctor or a nurse for advice or test results. If they are not immediately available, they may call you back.

Out of Hours Services
On weekdays between the hours of 6:30pm and 8:00am, and all day and night at weekends and on bank holidays; services are commissioned by the Eden Valley PCT.

If you require medical treatment you have a choice:
If you wish to see an emergency doctor, phone 01228 401999
If you require health information or advice,you may phone
NHS Direct, a 24-hour nurse-led advice line, on 0845 4647.
Other sources of medical help or advice NHS Direct Online at http://www.nhsdirect.nhs.uk

Home visits
Patients are generally seen at the surgery, but between the hours of 8:00am and 6:30pm patients may be seen at home if the doctor considers a home visit necessary because of the patient’s medical condition. Please call the surgery as soon as possible if you believe a home visit to be necessary.

Keswick Cottage Hospital
The doctors also provide services at Keswick Cottage Hospital. The hospital has facilities for minor injuries, x-rays, physiotherapy and occupational therapy. Visiting consultants hold regular clinics. There is an active day hospital for the elderly. Our local hospital also has beds that can be used by the doctors for their own patients. Patients with injuries may be asked to attend the hospital for treatment.

Teaching
In addition to providing general medical services the practice also undertakes continuing education and training of health care professionals working at the practice and teaches medical students from the University of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne.

Click here for: Services available during core hours 8:00am to 6:30pm under the NHS contract.

Complaints
This practice follows the NHS complaints procedure when dealing with complaints.
A copy of our practice complaints procedure is available at reception.

You may also comment on the service direct to the Practice Manager, who will follow up any concerns appropriately.

Patient rights and responsibilities
You have a right to expect a high standard of medical 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. 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.

Violent patients Zero tolerance
The NHS operates 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 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. The PCT is then responsible for providing further medical care for such patients.

Access to patient information
Confidential patient data will be shared within the practice heath care team and with other health care professionals to whom you are referred for care. Your data may be used by those clinical teams providing your care for the essential purpose of clinical audit.

Confidential patient data may also be required for the broader purposes of public health and audit, research, the provision of health care services, teaching and training. Data disclosed will be kept to the minimum required to serve the purpose and if possible will be anonymised before disclosure.

Confidential and identifiable patient information will not be disclosed otherwise without explicit consent, unless;

1. it is a matter of life and death or serious harm to you or to another individual
2. it is overwhelmingly in the public interest to do so
3. there is a legal obligation to do so.

In all of these circumstances the minimum identifiable information that is essential to serve the purpose may be revealed to someone with a legal entitlement to access the data for that purpose.

All individuals with access to your data have a professional and / or contractual duty of confidentiality.

If you are concerned about any of the ways in which your confidential data is passed on, further information is available from the practice manager. You are entitled to register an objection, which will be respected if this is possible.

Click here for: Services available during core hours 8:00am to 6:30pm under the NHS contract.