Complaints

Complaints

Our experienced team of dentists and hygienists are here to offer you the highest standard of hygiene and professional oral care. We put you in control of your treatment plan by giving you an open and clear estimate of cost before starting any treatment, so you can establish which treatment option is right for you. We can then provide you with the care that you need to achieve a healthy, comfortable and aesthetic smile.

We take pride in the quality of treatment we provide. If you are not happy with any aspect of the treatment provided, please speak in confidence either in person or on the phone to one of our reception staff or your treating dentist where your concern will be discussed with you and a resolution identified.

If you feel that you cannot speak to our staff in person, then please write in to our practice address where we will acknowledge your concern within 3 working days and investigate the matter and provide you with a written report of our findings within 15 working days and any resolution we will provide.

We want our service to meet your expectations. If you have a concern or complaint about any aspect of our service, we want to identify how we can improve to ensure that we meet your expectations in future. Our aim is to learn from any feedback we receive and improve the service we provide to our patients

We will deal with complaints courteously and promptly and aim to resolve the matter as quickly as possible.

Our complaint’s policy

If you wish to make a complaint or simply let us know how we could have done better, please contact Dr A Soneji, our principal dentist.

• By telephone on 020 89073440
• By email at enquiries@pearlsmile.co.uk
• By letter to Pearl Dental Care Centre, 269 Kenton Road, Kenton, Harrow, MiddlesexHA3 0HQ
• In person.

The principal dentist works at the practice full time and will endeavour to be available during these times. You may find it more convenient to make an appointment with the principal dentist to ensure that he can dedicate sufficient time to meet with you.

If you contact the practice to make a complaint and the principal dentist is not available, we will arrange a convenient time for them to contact you. We will ask you for brief details of your complaint so that we can gather any useful information before contacting you.

If the matter requires a more immediate response, we will arrange for a senior member of the dental team to deal with it.

If your complaint is about your dental treatment or the fee charged, we will usually ask the dentist concerned to contact you, unless you do not want this.

What will happen next?

• We will send you a letter acknowledging receipt of your complaint within 3 working days of receiving it, enclosing a copy of this procedure.
• We will then investigate your complaint. This will normally involve to our principal dentist Dr A Soneji, reviewing the matter and speak to the member of staff who acted for you.
• We will offer to discuss the complaint with you and will ask how you would like to be kept informed of developments – by telephone, letters or e-mail or by face-to-face meetings.
• We will let you know how we will deal with your complaint and the likely time that the investigation will take to complete. If you do not wish to discuss the complaint further, we will still let you know the expected timescale for completing the investigation.
• We will investigate your complaint within 14 days and, as far as reasonably practicable, will let you know how our investigation is progressing.
• When we have completed our investigation, we will provide you with a full written report, unless you have told us that you do not wish for further communication. The report will explain how we considered the complaint, the conclusions we reached for each part of your complaint, details of any remedial action we have taken and whether further action is needed.

Records

We keep proper and comprehensive records of any complaints that we receive and the action we have taken following investigation. We review these records regularly to ensure that we take every opportunity to improve our service.

If your complaint was about your dental treatment and you are not satisfied with the result of our investigation, you can take up the matter with a relevant external organisation.

The Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman, Millbank Tower, Millbank London SW1P 4QP (0345 015 4033 or www.ombudsman.org.uk).