Mixing private and NHS services?

[Puppysharness]

Hi everyone,

I’m registered with a private consultant for my delivery (I thought it was the safest option due to changing Covid situation), but I didn’t realise I would be required to do the whole shabang privately- there’s a lot of additional cost in terms of scans, blood tests, etc. Does anyone know if I’m allowed to use both private and NHS maternity services at once?

I haven’t been able to find the info online and when I called my local NHS maternity ward, they also didn’t know. I’ve been told by others that I’m no longer eligible for NHS, but that seems a bit antithetical to the ethos of the NHS and universal access, so I’d be surprised if that were the rule.

Can anyone enlighten me? Thank you!

you can do NHS up until delivery and then just pay for a private delivery. Although in the grand scheme of it i have found the majority of costs are the delivery (about £12-15k) with a couple of thousand for the prenatal care

It might depend on hospitals

There is nothing stopping you staying with the NHS to a certain point and then moving over to a private consultant, but the consultant might not be able to guarantee their availability for delivery only

I’m mixing NHS and Private but within the same hospital (C&W) so when I have appointments with the private consultant, she is able to view the blood test results etc done on the NHS on her computer
Not sure she would be as happy if I was seeing her at The Portland where she couldn’t access my notes

Out of curiosity, why do you think private is safer due to the changing covid situation?

The private wing where I am has much more sensible rules around birth partners etc so if there was any sort of restriction imposed again, I would trust the private part to use more common sense than the NHS section

Eg for scans, partners are required to wait outside the clinic until the woman is called in, which means a group of 15 men bunched up milling around the doors
The private section lets you sit together in the distanced waiting room

I mixed. I booked in on the nhs then switched to a private midwife for continuity of care. In the third trimester I developed complications and needed consultant care so I was referred back to the nhs. The foetal medicine consultant I saw was lovely, but the hospital where he worked had a terrible reputation for maternity care so I found a private consultant I liked at a hospital with a top level nicu and a great reputation for foetal medicine and went private for the final weeks and delivery.

Re safety and covid, in my local they moved all labour to the private hospital during the peaks. For free. Rest of the time I think those wards have been fine. You might want to check what happened where you are.

Thank you everyone. Sounds like I should try registering with NHS and see what happens? I wish I’d waited and not signed up with a private consultant when I was 6 weeks- in hindsight that seems unnecessary!

Re covid, it was partially the birth partners issue- when I found out I was pregnant in Jan my local NHS hospital had really strict rules about partners, and I didn’t want mine to risk missing out. I also thought in the event of a big peak around my due date, I’d want to get as much distance from overwhelmed covid wards as possible.

When you say you ‘signed up’, they didn’t take money off you at 6 weeks, surely?

It’s never too late to register with an nhs hospital
If they won’t let you self refer, get your GP to refer you
If you’re already past 12 weeks, they’ll do the bloods etc as soon as possible and potentially also a scan