Governance & Quality

Mission statement

The Maitland Clinic aims to provide the best possible hair restoration treatment available anywhere in the world. This means that we use the most advanced surgical techniques and technology, combined with painstaking attention to detail and aesthetics, and a culture of lifelong patient care.

The founding principle of The Maitland Clinic is that each patient should be provided with the full individual attention and care of highly qualified medical professionals, to ensure that he or she can enjoy a lifetime of completely natural-looking hair.

We strive to provide safe, effective, compassionate, high-quality care and continuously reflect on the service that we provide in order to improve the experience for our patients and staff.

Candour is defined in the Robert Francis report as:

“The volunteering of all relevant information to persons who have or may have been harmed by the provision of services, whether or not the information has been requested and whether or not a complaint or a report about that provision has been made.”

At The Maitland Clinic, we openly support the Duty of Candour and will always strive to be open, honest and transparent. We support the ‘Being Open’ policy and actively encourage our staff to be truthful in their dealings with patients if things go wrong. We want all incidents and complaints to be investigated and any lessons learned from this process to be shared within the organisation and with patients.

We believe that good governance fosters inward facing scrutiny, honesty and transparency. We ensure that our directors comply with the ‘fit and proper persons test’ and aspire to being a well-led CQC regulated organisation.
We actively support whistleblowing and want to know if things are not quite right so that we can make them so.

Our patients expect and deserve that our organisation and our individual practitioners to be honest, open and truthful in all our dealings with them and we have put in place the systems and processes to enable this. We have a sub-committee of the senior management team called the Quality, Governance, Patient Safety and Risk Committee. This committee meets quarterly and discusses all of the areas within its name, and we invite a staff representative to join this committee to ensure we are engaging with our entire team.

We continually strive to be an open and honest organisation. One of the ways we achieve this is by asking our patients to feedback the about their experience in a post-procedure questionnaire. We also carry out staff audits and we listen. ‘You say we did’ is how we implement what our patients and staff inform us in their feedback.

Our overall ambition is to provide the highest quality hair transplantation and we welcome ongoing feedback and engagement to help ensure we remain instigators for excellence in healthcare provision.

Interpreting and translation services

At The Maitland Clinic, we are committed to providing high-quality healthcare services to all of our patients, regardless of their language or communication needs.

As part of this commitment, we recognise the importance of providing medical interpreters and sign language communication during consultations to ensure effective communication and understanding between patients and healthcare providers.

We strive to make these services readily available to all patients who require them and will take all necessary steps to ensure that language and communication barriers do not prevent our patients from receiving the care they need.

Please let us know if you would like interpreting or translation services during your consultation or procedure with us at The Maitland Clinic.

Concerns & Complaints Procedure

Information for Patients

The Maitland Clinic welcomes feedback, and takes any concern or complaint about our service seriously. This page explains how to raise a concern or complaint, what you can expect from us, and how to take the matter further if you remain unhappy with our response.

Our Commitment to You

• All of your feedback is important to us.
• We want to make it easy for you to raise a concern or complaint, if you need to.
• We follow a complaints procedure and keep you informed throughout.
• We will try to answer all your questions and address any concerns you raise.
• We want you to have a positive experience of making a complaint, if one is needed.
• Your feedback helps us to improve our service for everyone.

The Maitland Clinic is committed to resolving complaints about its service in an open, efficient and conciliatory manner, which aims to satisfy your concerns. We aim to learn from our mistakes and build any lessons into how we work, to help prevent the same thing happening again, and we investigate every complaint in the strictest confidence.
If you need any reasonable adjustments to help you raise or discuss a concern — for example because English is not your first language, or because of a disability — please let us know and we will do what we can to help.

What Is a Complaint?

A complaint is any communication about our goods or services that requires investigation and a formal response — for example, concerns about the care or treatment you received, the outcome, the
information you were given, or the behaviour of a member of our team. You can raise a complaint
yourself, or someone can raise one on your behalf (such as a family member), with your consent.

What This Procedure Covers

This procedure covers complaints about any aspect of the care or service you received at The Maitland
Clinic, regardless of the outcome you are seeking. There are some matters this procedure cannot resolve, which are better handled by another body:

• Allegations that the law has been broken — these should be reported to the police.
• A determination of whether clinical negligence occurred — this is a matter for the courts; we will advise you of your right to seek independent legal advice.
• Breach of data protection legislation — handled by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ico.org.uk).
• Breach of a clinician’s professional standards or fitness to practise — handled by their professional regulator (for example the GMC, NMC or HCPC).
• Matters already decided by a court, or where you have told us you intend to take legal proceedings.

We will always tell you if your complaint, or part of it, falls outside this procedure, and point you to the
right place.

Step 1 — Tell Us Straightaway

If you are unhappy with any aspect of your care or our service, please tell us as soon as possible so we can look into it, explain, apologise, and put things right wherever we can. In many cases, if you let us know quickly, we can resolve things there and then — please speak to the Clinic Manager.

Stage 1 — Raising a Formal Complaint With Us

If you remain unhappy, or would prefer to raise your concern in writing from the outset, please contact:

The Clinic Manager, The Maitland Clinic, 1000 Lakeside North Harbour, Western Road, Cosham, Portsmouth, PO6 3EN.

Please tell us what has caused you concern, when the relevant events took place, and what outcome you would like to see. You should raise your complaint as soon as possible, and normally within 6 months of the event, or within 6 months of it coming to your attention.

Once we receive your complaint, here is what will happen:

• We will acknowledge your complaint within 3 working days, and let you know who is handling it.
• We will offer you a meeting, in person, by phone or by video call, to discuss your concerns and agree what will be investigated.
• We will carry out a thorough investigation, reviewing relevant records, correspondence and statements from those involved.
• We aim to give you a full written response within 20 working days. If our investigation is still ongoing, we will write to you explaining why, and keep you updated at least every 20 working days.
• We aim to resolve your complaint within 3 months of receiving it.

Stage 2 — Independent Review by the IDF

If you remain dissatisfied after our Stage 1 response, you can ask for an independent review. This should be requested in writing, within 6 months of our Stage 1 response, to:

Complaint Manager, The Independent Doctors Federation, Lettsom House, 11 Chandos Street, London, W1G 9EB.

The IDF Complaint Manager, who was not involved in Stage 1, will acknowledge your request within 3 working days, ask you to summarise what remains unresolved, and may invite you to a meeting. They will independently review the Stage 1 investigation and response, and write to you confirming the outcome, or offering an alternative resolution, within 20 working days (or with regular updates if more time is needed). They will also advise you of your right to progress to Stage 3 if you remain unhappy.

Stage 3 — Independent External Adjudication (ISCAS)

Please note that Stages 2 and 3 of this procedure are available for complaints concerning the care provided by Dr Edward Ball, as a member of the Independent Doctors Federation (IDF).
This is because access to the IDF and ISCAS complaints routes is held through an individual clinician’s IDF membership.

The Maitland Clinic is a subscriber to the Independent Sector Complaints Adjudication Service (ISCAS), an independent, not-for-profit body recognised by the CQC and other UK regulators for resolving complaints in the independent healthcare sector. If you remain dissatisfied once Stages 1 and 2 are complete, you can ask ISCAS for independent adjudication, in writing, within 6 months of the Stage 2 response, to:

Independent Sector Complaints Adjudication Service (ISCAS), 100 St Paul’s Churchyard, London EC4M 4BU.

Telephone: 020 7536 6091
Email: info@iscas.org.uk
Website: iscas.cedr.com

ISCAS will acknowledge your request within 3 working days and appoint an Independent Adjudicator to your case. You will be asked to consent to the release of your relevant records. The cost of adjudication is met by The Maitland Clinic, not by you. The Adjudicator’s decision is final and binding on both you and the Clinic, and there is no right of appeal.

A Quick Reference

You should raise your concern within 6 months of the event (or of it coming to your attention), and escalate between each stage within 6 months of the previous response, unless there are exceptional circumstances.

If You Need to Raise a Concern or Complaint Elsewhere

There are some matters that fall outside this procedure and are better handled by another body. For example: the Care Quality Commission (CQC) regulates our service and can be contacted if you believe we have not met the expected standards (www.cqc.org.uk); the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) handles complaints about data protection (ico.org.uk); and the General Medical Council, Nursing and Midwifery Council, or Health and Care Professions Council handle concerns about a named clinician’s professional conduct or fitness to practise. We will always point you to the right place if your concern falls outside this procedure.

A Note on Behaviour

We will always treat you, and anyone raising a concern on your behalf, with courtesy and respect, and we ask for the same in return for our staff. Our complaints procedure follows the IDF and ISCAS guidance for managing unacceptable behaviour, which may apply if contact becomes excessive, abusive or threatening towards staff.

Further Information

• The full Maitland Clinic Concerns & Complaints Policy — available on our website and as a paper
  copy in the clinic: Concerns & Complaints Policy
• The ISCAS Patient Guide for Making a Complaint — available at iscas.cedr.com, or from us on request.
• More about ISCAS: iscas.cedr.com
• More about the IDF: www.idf.co.uk

Your feedback — good or bad — helps us keep improving the care we provide.