Legal
Complaints procedure
How to complain about Sevanta, what happens when you do, how long each step takes, and where to go if you are not satisfied with our answer — including which complaints we cannot handle because they belong to the hospital.
01Complaints about Sevanta
Write to us by email, by letter to the registered office, or through the form on the contact page. Tell us what happened, when, and what you would like us to do. We acknowledge every complaint within five working days, and a director who was not involved in your case investigates it. You receive a full written response within twenty working days; if we need longer, we tell you why and when to expect it, and we never leave it beyond thirty days without a written update.
02If you are not satisfied
Tell us, and we will review the response at director level and reply within ten working days. If you are still not satisfied you may take the matter to an alternative dispute resolution provider; we will tell you which one we are registered with, and whether we agree to use it, in our final response. You also keep every right to take the matter to court.
03Complaints about your treatment
A complaint about clinical care — the operation, the ward, a clinician — belongs to the hospital that provided it, under its own complaints procedure and Indian law. We will help you make it, we will chase it, and we will record it against the hospital’s entry on our register. We cannot investigate it ourselves, because we are not clinicians and were not the provider, and we will not pretend otherwise. The Care Quality Commission, the General Medical Council and the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman have no jurisdiction over care provided in India.
04Complaints about your data
Raise these with us first, in the same way, and we treat them with the same timescales. You have the right at any time to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office, at ico.org.uk or on 0303 123 1113.
05What we do with complaints
Every complaint, upheld or not, is recorded and reviewed at least annually, and anything that changes how we work is changed in writing. We will publish the number of complaints received and upheld each year, once there is a year to report on.