Complaint handling best practice
You may be unable to prevent a complaint from being raised, however in our experience, there are certain steps which can be taken to avoid a complaint from escalating. We would advise the following:
- Ensure that your practice has an in-house complaints procedure and that it is visible to patients.
- On receipt of a complaint, contact your indemnifier for advice.
- Acknowledge receipt of all complaints in writing, ideally within two working days, and provide a timeframe for when the patient will receive your full response.
- A general guide, patients should receive a full response within 10 working days. If this is not possible, please advise the patient of the date that they should expect a full reply to their complaint.
- Follow through on any arrangements made with patients, such as a response to their complaint or referral to a specialist or hospital, keep them updated of any progress made.
If you are registered with the General Dental Council, you should ensure you are familiar with its expectations on complaints handling in its Standards for the Dental Team.
What to do if you need assistance from the DCS
If despite your best efforts you and the patient are unable to reach a resolution, please advise the patient to contact the DCS for assistance and we will work you both to try and resolve the matter.
Should you have any queries or questions in relation to our process, please call us on 020 8253 0800 and a member of the team will be happy to help you.
Principles of good complaint handling
The dental sector has developed a set of universal principles for good complaint handling. These six core principles provide a simple template for best practice, helping dental professionals and patients to understand what to expect and get the most from feedback and complaints, for the benefit of all.
The six core principles are:
- All of your feedback is important to us.
- We want to make it easy for you to raise a concern or if you need to.
- We follow a complaints procedure and keep you informed.
- We will try to answer all your questions and any concerns you raise.
- We want you to have a positive experience making a complaint.
- Your feedback helps us to improve our service.
A poster and leaflet showing these core principles are available for you to display on walls and in waiting areas of your practice. By using these materials, you can clearly to patients that you follow a good complaint handling .
The leaflet and poster can be downloaded below (also available in hard copy on request):
Complaint handling initiative poster (63.4 KB, PDF)
Complaint handling initiative leaflet (64.6 KB, PDF)
You may also find the social media toolkit helpful. It contains example social media posts and images for you to use.
The toolkit can be downloaded below:
Dental professionals toolkit (5 MB, ZIP)