Swindon Health Centre, Carfax Street, Swindon SN1 1ED

1. Home
2. Urgent Care
   1. Emergencies
   2. Urgent Health Problems
3. The Walk-in Service
4. How to Register
5. Appointments
   1. Routine Appointments
   2. Emergency Appointments
   3. Telephone Appointments
   4. Home Visits
   5. Cancelling Appointments
   6. Out of Hours
6. Repeat Prescriptions
7. Services
   1. Registered Patients
   2. Non-registered Patients
8. Travel Services
   1. Travel Advice
   2. Travel Vaccinations & Charges
   3. Travel Questionnaire
9. General Information
   1. Change of Address/Telephone
   2. Charges
   3. Carers and those they care for
   4. For Disabled Patients
   5. Teaching & Training
   6. Language Difficulties
   7. Rights & Responsibilities
   8. Confidentiality
10. About Us
    1. About the Company
    2. Meet the Team
11. How are we doing?
    1. Tell us what you think
    2. LINk
    3. Patient Advice & Liaison Service
    4. Comments and Complaints
12. Contact
    1. How to Find Us
    2. How to Contact Us

General Information

Change of Address or Telephone Number

If you are a registered patient, please let us know if you move, or change your phone number. In an emergency, the doctor could go to the wrong address by mistake! Also, if we send you mail and it is returned, we could assume you have moved out of the area and take you off our practice list.

If you have recently moved, use our online Change of Address form to notify us.

Charges

Our doctors can only sign forms, write letters, or do private medicals if you are registered with us. These all need your medical records so have to be done by your own GP.

The cost of doing letters, medical reports and private medicals is not covered by the NHS, so there is a charge for them. Most of these are listed in Patient Charges or ask a member of staff.

Carers - and Those They Care for

If you care for, or are being cared for by someone else, it is really helpful for the doctor to know. We will not discuss your treatment with your carer without your written consent. Please fill in our Carer Registration Form so that we have full contact details of your carer, including their telephone number

We can help regarding services and support for carers in Swindon. Please contact Dee Yeates on 01793 546031 to find out more.

For Disabled Patients

We have two disabled car parking spaces in the small car park at the front of the building, with direct level access into the Health Centre. There are another six disabled bays in the Queenstown Car Park behind the Health Centre.

Within the Health Centre, there is an accessible lift on the ground floor, along with toilets for disabled people.

All our counters are low and the automatic check-in system can be used by people in wheelchairs.

For patients with hearing loss, we have a portable loop system.

It would be helpful if patients with a visual impairment could ring beforehand to let us know what assistance you need.

Teaching & Training

This is a teaching and training practice and from time to time we have people here undergoing training of various kinds, from medical students to health professionals doing postgraduate training. We will let you know in advance if this is likely to affect you and, of course, get your consent beforehand. If you do not want to take part, that’s fine. It will not affect your treatment in any way.

Language Difficulties

If you do not speak – or understand – English very well, we can use the telephone interpreting service, Language Line. This will help you understand what the doctor or nurse is saying. If you would find this helpful, please tell us when you book your appointment and we will allow extra time.

Rights and Responsibilities

We are committed to doing our very best to offer our patients the highest standards of medical care and treatment.

In return, we ask all our patients to behave responsibly towards the practice and our staff. This means keeping your appointments - or cancelling them if you cannot attend – and following any medical advice you are given.

On rare occasions, the relationship between the practice and a patient can break down completely and if this is the case, you can choose to register with another practice.

Similarly, we also have the right to remove a patient from our list but this would generally only follow a warning and we would give the patient concerned the specific reason for doing so.

We do have a ‘zero tolerance’ policy on verbal or physical abuse towards any member of our staff and any such incident will be investigated by the Directors. In extreme cases of unreasonable behaviour or violence, we would ask the Police to remove a patient from the building altogether.

As a courtesy to other people, we would ask patients not to use mobile phones in the waiting areas.

Confidentiality

We hold all patient information securely and all our staff are bound by a requirement of confidentiality.

However, we sometimes need to share information with other health professionals such as consultants, so you get the right care. If you do not wish us to do this, please contact Sarah Smith on 01793 541655.

Registered patients can get copies of their medical records in accordance with the Data Protection Act, for a small fee. Contact Sarah Smith on 01793 541655.