Private Fees

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The National Health Service provides most health care to most people free of charge , but the NHS does not employ GPs, instead it has a contract with them to provide NHS general medical services for their patients.

Some patients may also decide to pay for Private Care. Whilst they are still entitled to free NHS Care this must be seperate from your Private Care and the NHS Care can't subsidise it. Click here for read more 

Sometimes GPs are asked to provide additional services, which fall outside their contract with the NHS, and in these circumstances, they are entitled to make a reasonable charge for providing them. It is up to the individual practice to decide how much to charge, although the BMA produces lists of suggested fees for the Doctors to use as a guideline. We check our prices against other practices to ensure that we keep them as low as possible.

What is covered by the NHS and what is not?

If you ask for the doctor to complete a form, a letter or a report, you should expect that there will be a charge.

Examples of non-NHS services for which GPs will charge their NHS patients are:

• Certain travel vaccinations
• Private medical insurance reports
• Holiday cancellation claim forms
• Referral for private care forms
• Letters requested by, or on behalf of, the patient
• Examples of non-NHS services for which GPs can charge other institutions are:
  • Medical reports for an insurance company
  • Some reports for the DSS/Benefits Agency
  • Medical report for the DVLA
  • Examinations of company employees (work medicals)

What is the process?

We require payment prior to any work being completed. Someone will contact you with the fee and if you would like to proceed we can send an invoice to you for payment. When a doctor signs a certificate of completes a report, the doctors needs to check the patient’s entire medical record to ensure that they are providing accurate information, our fees vary depending on the time required to complete the requested information.

GPs will aim to complete the private medical work within 28 days from the date of payment but sometimes this can take longer due to clinical work taking priority. Due to the pressures within the NHS this time frame is not something we can negotiate on. Please be advised that we are not able to consider work that falls outside of our NHS contract as ‘urgent’, we have to prioritise our NHS clinical work and we appreciate your understanding of this. Our GPs will always do their best to complete the work as quickly as they can for you.

If you have several forms requiring completion, please present them all at once and ask the Care Navigator if bringing them as a ‘job lot’ can reduce the price.

The following policy is followed for any requests by patients for a sick note around the time of a school or university examination:

• If ill <1 week and sit the exam then no note can be issued
• If ill >1 week and sit the exam then a note can be issued if they were seen by a doctor or nurse practitioner in the surgery
• If you miss the exam, you will need to be seen on day of exam, and we will issue a note.
• If you have never seen by us, then no note can be issued.
• If you leave partway through an exam, you must come and be seen the same day and then we can do note, otherwise no note can be issued.

 The cost of providing the private sick note will be £15