For those who have accessed private healthcare, do you find there is a big difference in speed and quality of care compared to NHS?

[Yappydogs]

I recently decided to book a private GP appointment owing to some ongoing health issues I've been having. It's the first time in my life that I've accessed private health treatment. It was regarding something that's been impacting my quality of life for a while. I was having tremendous difficulties getting an appointment with my NHS GP. At the practice I'm registered with, you have to jump through hoops backwards and blindfolded to even have a chance of getting an appointment. You can only get an FTF (face-to-face) appointment in what they deem to be exceptional circumstances. You also have to deal with receptionists gatekeeping you (and heaven forbid if it's an embarrassing problem, or just something you'd prefer to only discuss with the GP directly). They seemingly have an obsession with telephone appointments. I believe this is the norm now in England, but some practices seem to be worse for it than others.

With all of that mentioned, with the private appointment I had, the difference in how easy it was to make an appointment, and how I was dealt with upon attending, was night and day compared to the NHS. I booked a 30-minute appointment which gave me ample time to explain what my issues were. With the NHS it's a maximum of 10 minutes per appointment, and I've found that in reality it can often be less than that. I get the sense that they can't wait to get rid of you, and there is a sense of a revolving door when attending appointments. The GP I saw privately was very patient and understanding. I actually feel like I am getting somewhere now after being fobbed off for so long. I'm aware that it may well get expensive quite quickly as I don't have PMI, but I was prepared for that. I've been saving up for this appointment and subsequent ones that I might require. Do you think the old adage of "you get what you pay for" applies to healthcare as much as any other service or commodity?

I wish a private provider would set up an A&E where you just turn up and pay for whatever is needed, but with a computer system that actually “talks” to the NHS equivalent.

I completely agree with this.

Have used twice. Once when I had a "cold" that was gradually getting worse. Got to work and realised I shouldn't have been there. Saw private GP 10 mins walk away at lunchtime and left with antibiotics. Would have had to play the 8am phone game at my GP.
Second I went to see an ENT consultant. Appointment was 2 week wait, comprehensive tests a couple of weeks later, follow up consultation about three weeks on.
GP referred me to NHS for ongoing monitoring based on results of tests and it took nearly a year to see the consultant.
Private tests were not cheap, but worth it to know what was likely to be wrong rather than a year of wondering.

Area dependant. When my mother was dying from cancer, it was impossible to get any form of treatment during weekends, nights nor bank holidays. She started having problems on the Friday evening of a bank holiday weekend, and we left several messages on the cancer nurses "emergency" phone line, but Friday night came and went, then Saturday came and went, despite us making more phone calls, and she collapsed on the Sunday and died whilst being blue lighted to A&E. Then come Tuesday morning, we got several phone call backs from different cancer nurses who'd been going through the messages left over the weekend!! So much for "emergency"!!

Cancer specialist nurses are entirely different from district nurses though. They never say they offer an OOH service

I think the difference is the wait as most have said, a consultation with a consultant at bupa when self funding is £250 in our area , but could be seen within 48 hours .
A good friend of mine had a cardiac arrest during a routine op at private hospital, she woke up in intensive care in an nhs hospital & was not moved back once stable , as others have pointed out there’s zero emergency care . I think you’re racially paying for a queue jump , nicer room/ food and maybe a bit more one to one attention .

Actually * not racially 🙈

I’m really sorry to hear about your experience with your mum. I am going through similar now with a relative. They had private healthcare all through their working life but now they need emergency care they are left with the NHS. Private companies do the nice planned procedures, diagnostics and outpatients. They would be very foolish to go into something high risk like elderly medical care. It would cost a lot more than expected as a patient to pay for an emergency admission.

I'm sorry. That's awful.

There are some private urgent cares. They're not full A&Es for immediately life threatening issues, but I've found them very good and relatively inexpensive.

HCA have a few in London. You're in front of a doctor very quickly. They run bloods, EEG or whatever you might need and the results are back quickly. They can arrange to admit you privately if appropriate, and if you need the NHS they call you an ambulance and manage the handover. It then speeds things up at A&E because the issue has been identified and you are sent with the doctor's letter and test results. At at least if you're going downhill you're with medical until the ambulance arrives.

Ds1 went to a private GP due to his poor mental health and after 4 weeks, our GP still hadn’t processed his re-registration after he returned from university! Private GP has been great.

I am not long back from a private breast screening appointment. Just under £500 for a consultation and mammogram and booked within a week, worth every penny for me to know my lumpy tissue is just that. I don’t ever manage to even get a GP appointment because I’m at work at 8am when the phones open and can’t always drop everything to call.

I have to say, I had cervical cancer 20 years ago and I couldn’t fault the NHS care I got but I don’t think things are so quick these days.

I found a lump and saw my GP the next day. 3 working days later I was at breast clinic. Could not fault it at all. It really does seem like a post lottery

@camelfinger Yes, I know private will only cover some areas of health but don’t get old and expect to be treated with dignity or respect. It’s heartbreaking and atrocious! I’d avoid the nhs at all costs but many elderly cannot. In many ways we need to ramp up private care to alleviate the nhs from certain areas of work then resources could be directed elsewhere.

I wouldn’t go NHS for cancer. Why would you? NHS treatment is similar for most cancers but yoh often get offered drugs NHS won’t pay for which are standard of care elsewhere and tests and results are infinitely quicker meaning quicker treatment

my DD needed an mri and the nhs wait was six months. I thought that was unacceptable but we needed a referral for a private doc and the incompetence of my GP practise (where you can actually get a GP appointment same day), was unbelievable. We were referred to an adult only practise (it was for my child who was 13), a gastroenterologist (it was for migraines and shoulder pain) and so on. We did eventually see someone who wasn’t particularly helpful and told us to still have the second NHS MRI, which we were told was ‘fine’ - she was diagnosed with MS, by a different NHS hospital four years of unexplained symptoms later.
But 20 years ago my DH was admitted to an NHS hospital for cellulitis. He had a Bupa so they moved him to a private hospital. He said one of the doctors was the same but it was almost like staying in a hotel.
I wouldn’t hesitate to pay for private if I thought it necessary for speed, but other than the nicer and more attentive nursing, is the ultimate result better? Speed does count for a lot though.

@mondaytosunday my healthcare sends me a list of consultants. I choose the one I want (and ask them to extend the distance range if I want someone from out of area). Only then do I go to the GP for a referral letter.

Oh and before I choose a consultant, I ask around for recommendations. It's a shame you had the experience you did.

I usually live in SW London and have been to the Royal Marsden on the NHS for over a decade for routine follow up following my brain tumour diagnosis. I currently live overseas but return to the RM every 6 months as I want continuity of care, and my husband's employer will pay for it privately. I go to the same MRI machine, with the same friendly team and see the same consulant. The only differences at all are that I now see the consultant in person on the day of the MRI (after a 3+ hour wait) rather than a phone call at a specific time the following week, and get some tea and biscuits for the inconvenience. I cannot wait to go back to the NHS! We have had private insurance (through work) since before the diagnosis but have never felt the need to use it.

We also took our son for some allergy testing when he was about 8 months old (just before I had chemo, hence needing it fast tracked) and it felt as though the private doctor thought we wanted him to have allergies, as they kept saying things like "obviously, most parents continue to use dairy free alternatives just to be on the safe side but I suppose if you really want you can give dairy products, given the negative results" .... it was bizarre!!

The private consultants or surgeons work for the nhs too. Private isn’t better surgeons, it’s the same people.

I had my eye operation at the nhs hospital! What I didn’t do was wait any longer! NHs had already let me waif 18 months and no op date in sight so I got my health insurance involved. Three weeks later - done. On a Saturday morning at the nhs hospital (which was empty on that wing). So no nice waiting room! Nothing special - just an available surgeon who was my nhs consultant surgeon. Check ups afterwards were mostly at a private hospital but when he needed better equipment - back at the nhs hospital. Maybe as a private patient I had more check ups - not sure.

It’s speed of service you pay for and you aren’t getting worse as you wait for the nhs. My surgeon thought I’d be waiting over a year on top of the 18 months I’d already waited! As my sight was gojng to deteriorate further, I didn’t want to wait.

Mine too but it is outsourced to a CIC.

Like night and day. I would sell all of my belongings and live on toast before giving up my private health insurance.

NHS GP appointments allow an average of 10 minutes because most issues can be dealt with in 5. If it's complex and you know it's going to be complex it's possible to pre-book a double appointment but I've certainly been in the GP's room for a lot longer than 10 minutes when it was actually medically necessary. I've also never had any difficulty getting an appointment when it's actually medically necessary. But I'm a cancer survivor and there's been a lot of instances when it's genuinely been actually medically necessary so I guess I've been the kind of case that all the screening and "hoop jumping" is designed to find and prioritise whilst diverting the "worried well" elsewhere.

In general, people don't know how to triage themselves and be selective about when to ask for a GP appointment. 75% of those who want a GP appointment are actually people who

• will be fine in a couple of days and just need self-care at home
• could get the advice they need from a pharmacist
• could have dialled 111 and spoken to a nurse who may in some cases be entirely able to deal with the issue (or direct them to one of the two options above) or may agree that a GP appointment is necessary in which case the 111 setup includes access to reserved GP appointment slots so no further hoop-jumping needed.
• will be fine with a 2 minute phone appointment

Each GP practice needs a setup to work out who the 25% who aren't in these categories are, and prioritise them for the limited number of F2F appointments. If you are screened out and have £££ to spare then of course it's ok to go private but I don't think it's a case of "you get what you pay for" - the NHS isn't free, each thing is paid for throigh taxes and there are setups and flowcharts to ensure that each use of NHS resources is targeted where it will be most effective. There are always options for additional scans or treatments that exist and could be used if paid for privately but if they aren't covered within NICE guidelines to be given through the NHS it's because the probability of them making a significant difference is too low compared to the cost, so going private to access something you can't get through the NHS will, most of the time, not really be worth the money medically speaking (but may well be worth the money to you for the additional comfort, ambience and reassurance of the circumstances of your treatments, if you can spare the money)

@FenceBooksCycle you missed out speed.

If you have private insurance, I can't see for a minute why you would sit on a waiting list. Why I wouldn't have my mammogram done sooner, my prolapse repair done at a convenient time (and the several follow up repair surgeries done the moment they were needed instead of being on a further waiting list in pain).

I don't entirely disagree with this, but there is also considerable variance between NHS cancer care, say between a DGH and a specialist centre such as Marsden, Christie etc. NHS care in those centres is decent enough, largely because they attract the best consultants. The optimum is of course private care within those NHS centres. I suspect that the quality of care received by Dame Deborah James at the Marsden (much of which was private) was a big part of the reason for her being able to live with stage 4 bowel cancer for so long, although sadly it did not change the outcome.

Like @FenceBooksCycle I am also a cancer survivor with a genetic predisposition to around 10 cancer types, some of which are - statistically speaking - a bob-on certainty. However, my GP practice is complete dogshit and I can never get an appointment, even for symptoms from my personalised cancer menu, so I suspect this mythical triage and prioritisation does not successfully winnow out the worried well everywhere and is (along with much of the NHS) a complete postcode lottery.

I have also posted upthread about my DM who was left in A&E with suspected sepsis for 11 hours this week. I am trying to arrange - or at least discuss - prophylactic AB's with her GP, because she simply will not endure that ordeal again and says she would rather die than set foot in a NHS hospital. GP (different practice to mine) is being predictably unhelpful, evasive and generally useless. I will contact a private GP for DM, of course, but I resent having to use the private sector just to be treated like a fellow grown-up with a brain, and not some supplicant.

I also cannot believe that, in the UK in 2025, cancer patients would rather forego essential treatment than endure NHS A&E if (as is likely) they become immunocompromised and contract an infection. .

Yes its better and its totally worth it IMO. I have PMI paid for by work with AXA, and I then pay myself to cover DH and DSs with Bupa monthly. It's something I never begrudge paying because the NHS is truly terrible for many areas, including any issues my children have had.

Yes the doctors are typically the same as those doing NHS work (not always though), but the difference with private is they actually want you there. You're a paying customer and without people using their service they'd fold. In the NHS however, they wish you weren't there. Your a public service user and they'd do better if less people were visiting! As a result, the atmosphere and treatment by staff is different and you feel less of an inconvenience, and less likely to be fobbed off. If you're paying, why not order some tests to rule some options out!? In the NHS, its about cost saving and only using resource where strictly strictly considered necessary - this can often lead to missing things.

Unfortunately, yes - the difference is ridiculous. We get private healthcare through DH's work.

A while ago my DH badly broke his arm in accident - the NHS hospital couldn't tell us when a slot for his operation would be (anytime up to a month after the accident itself) and wouldn't have offered any aftercare. Privately the operation was done within a week with 8 sessions of physio afterwards. The environment at the private hospital was totally different - clean, spacious, own room etc.

The only thing I would say is that the consultant who did the operation also works for the NHS, so it wasn't like the actual medical expertise would have been better privately. But the whole experience was.

There is apparently what amounts to a 'private A&E', but it is staffed and paid for by the public: It is across the bridge from the Palace of Westminster, and is not for the public, only for Parliament.

Yes