Patients Undergoing Private Treatment Protocol

There can be many good reasons why you might wish to chose non NHS treatment whether its because of shorter waiting times, a personal recommendation or perhaps because you benefit from memberships of a private medical scheme.

What ever your choice, it is important for you to know about limitations to NHS Treatments related to the care episode you have elected to receive private medical treatment.

As with all NHS care, once a patient is referred to a hospital or other health care provider the responsibility for care for that episode passes to the chosen provider and they are remaining responsible for all service aspects, procedures, and follow-ups until final discharge back to your GP. The same too applies for private providers.

All pre-treatment connected with your private care is the responsibility of the provider you have chosen, for example:

• All preoperative checks
• Assessments
• Pathology including all blood tests biopsies and other tests
• All physiological check such as BPs ECG etc
• All diagnostic imaging (Xray, ultrasound, Ct and MRI0

You can not elect to have some parts of these undertaken by the NHS and others by your private provider.

Your provider must arrange these privately as part of your care package, so it is important to make sure you have budgeted for them or that your personal medical insurance policy cover these costs. This is to enable your safe continuity of care for which they have become responsible. All post operative care for the episodes is the responsibility of health provider you have chosen.

Any complaints relating to your care or the level of service you have received from your private provider, needs to direct to them. We can not become involved in dealing with third party complaints. Your provider should have their own complaints policy which should be readily available to you.

We hope this will clarify some of the more common questions asked by patients when making decision about choosing private care.

Shared Care Policy

What are Shared Care Agreements?

Shared Care is when a Specialist asks a GP practice to take on responsibility for prescribing and monitoring medications usually only issued by Specialists. This might happen if you have been referred for a specific issue and a Specialist has made a diagnosis and put a treatment plan in place, or if you choose to go to a private clinic.

These agreements require all parties to accept shared care, and the ultimate responsibility for prescribing and monitoring remains with the Specialist/ Private provider.

Shared Care Agreements are not a ‘core’ part of our work in General Practice. By that, we mean they are not part of our NHS contract and not something we receive any additional support or resources to provide.

A GP can refuse a shared care agreement if he or she is not happy with the burden of responsibility it puts on the GP and the consultant/private provider must take full responsibility for prescribing and any necessary monitoring.

Background

We decided to review our Shared Care Agreement Policy due to the growing number of requests we are receiving from an increasingly large number of Private providers.

These requests place an increasing amount of work on our Practice team, and at times, this additional workload is impacting our ability to deliver our core services to you, our patients.

Our concern is that, without adequate resources to deal with this increasing demand, we can’t continue to assure ourselves that patients are safely monitored to the highest standards of care.

What this may mean for patients

If there is a Shared Care Agreement in place for your care, this will continue.

For patients with new treatment plans put in place by Specialists/private providers, responsibility for prescribing and monitoring your medication will remain solely with your Specialist/Private provider.