Complaints about Chiropractors

There are numerous aspects of chiropractic treatment you may feel compelled to complain about. It may be concerning the actual treatment or advice administered by a chiropractor or perhaps you may feel that the conduct of the chiropractor was not professional or made you uncomfortable. Alternatively you may even have worries that the actual mental or physical state of your chiropractor is not suitable. Complaints such as these can be conferred to the General Chiropractic Council (GCC) for further analysis and action to occur.

The General Chiropractic Council will not, however, take further action of complaints about a specific clinic or company or help you in a quest to receive compensation or a refund.


When may it be deemed necessary to complain to the GCC?

It is a legal requirement that all chiropractic clinics have a complaints procedure in place. This procedure should allow your concerns to be addressed in a timely and appropriate manner. Therefore, before approaching the General Chiropractic Council, you should first try complaining directly to the chiropractor or clinic in question.

If you do not class the result of direct complaining as appropriate, you may then write a formal complaint to the General Chiropractic Council (an address is redeemable from the GCC website). However, this is not a compulsory routine of complaining, as you are able to write directly to the GCC as opposed to first trying to resolve the issue through the chiropractic centre directly. You should note that the GCC will only accept written complaints that they have received via post, fax or e-mail.

When the General Chiropractic Council has received your complaint, they will then talk through your concerns with you and advise you on the next stage of the process.

Information required when making a complaint

There are certain requirements recommended by the General Chiropractic Council that you should consider including in your complaint to give the GCC the best overview of the situation.

The basic details that you should include are you name, address, e-mail, and telephone number (home and/or mobile phone). Also, if you are the owner of a fax machine, you may wish to give your fax number so the GCC can send letters in this manner. Further standard information required by the GCC involves details about the chiropractor being complained about. You should reveal their full name and address so the GCC is fully aware of the identity of the chiropractor and can check that they are registered and legal to work as a chiropractor.

You should follow these basic details with the particulars of your complaint. In this section, you should try and include exactly what happened and the location and dates of the incident. If there were any witnesses to the event then you should inform the GCC and if you were aware of their identity, this would also be rather helpful. Also, if you have hard evidence such as letters, you should make copies and send them attached to your complain if they are relevant. The GCC also needs to know whether they are the first port of call when making the complaint or whether you have seen anyone else surrounding the matter, for example, the chiropractic clinic.

After making a complaint to the GCC

Within a week of receiving the complaint, the General Chiropractic Council will write to you to assure that they have obtained it. In this letter, you will also be informed whether your complaint can be taken any further and if so, who is/will be dealing with the complaint and how you can get in contact with them.

If your complaint is being followed up, the GCC will be able to provide you with information about what the next step will be. In conjunction with this, they will also write to the chiropractor in question explaining that a complaint as been made against them. This step requires a copy of your complaint to be sent to the chiropractor, if this concerns you, contact the GCC as soon as possible. Also, if your health records are relevant to the complaint you have made, these will be obtained by the GCC. Following these formalities, the GCC will then thoroughly and fairly investigate your complain whilst keeping you up-to-date with the process.

You may be contacted by the General Chiropractic Council to query whether you mind if a solicitor gets in contact with you (either in person or over the phone). This is done so the solicitor can verify the details of the complaint and compose a legally binding statement. The solicitor’s fees will be paid by the GCC if this is done so you do not need to worry about any extra legal costs.

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