Private gynaecologist?

[greyskiesgreysea]

You have to wait a month for an appointment at my GP surgery, and they don't even tell you how long the wait to see a specialist (and then the wait for treatment) is. Because the hospital doesn't tell the GP. I've been on a list to see a consultant (different issue) for a year and a half.
Anyway, I have some symptoms that could well be ovarian cancer, and I'd be grateful for any recommendations and suggestions for going private, at least for diagnosis (I don't have insurance). Ideally Central Belt but will go farther if necessary. I have spoken to Spire in Edinburgh, and they said it would be "a few weeks" to get an ultrasound scan, which is far from ideal. I feel that living in Scotland, once you get to a risky age, can be a death sentence. Are people starting to go abroad for diagnosis?

I don’t have any recommendations but I will say it’s not just Scotland , all over the UK the NHS is broken .
It may be too late for this issue for you but I would definitely be taking out private health care if you can afford to do so .
Im 46 and haven’t had to claim on it yet , but have had bupa cover for approx a year @ £80 ish a month , it’s peace of mind for me

MIL sees someone at Ross Hall but I've no idea who. They have a site at Braehead.

You could look at their website and enquire?

@greyskiesgreysea i have no suggestions in your area but usually you can ring the admin/appointments at the hospital to find out where you are on the waiting list instead of asking your GP

Have you been clear with your GP that you feel your symptoms are potential cancer? Do they not have the 2 week pathway in Scotland? When I have had similar concerns I have been scanned and had the blood test fairly swiftly.

I had an early pregnancy scan at Window To The Womb last week and I noticed on their price list that they also do gynecology / general health scans where they check ovaries and provide a report. I only booked about a week before. Do you have anything like that nearby? At least then you could use the report to somehow get yourself moved up the list, or put your mind at rest.

ETA: apologies I picked up your post through Active and didn’t see it was in Scotsneg where I have no place to be! Feel free to ignore me; I hope you find a solution.

No, they don't have the 2 week pathway here. In theory a hospital is supposed to start treatment within 62 days of an urgent cancer referral (but you'd have a month to wait to see the gp and then probably months before an initial scan before you got to that urgent referral stage). I've just checked for my area and in 2024 that 62 day target was only met for about a third of women needing treatment for ovarian cancer. This presumably means that many women are waiting for over 6 months before getting any treatment. More likely a year. Must be causing a lot of deaths.

Of course I'm looking at .private hospitals in the Central Belt but there seem to be a lot of consultants who just do low level gynaecology. Plus recommendations are really helpful

My impression is that the private sector here doesn't really do the heavyweight cancer treatment, but I'd be happy to be told I'm wrong about that. Plus even private hospitals are extremely booked up.

The GP booked me in to have bloods taken, but even that is a 2 week wait.

Dr Cameron Martin (Spire healthcare) is excellent, he’s Edinburgh based.

Thank you. Unfortunately he's booked up for over a month.

Dr Cameron Martin at Spire, Murrayfield. He’s great and a consultation at £250 is worth it and will set your mind at rest, I hope.

If you e mail him he might slot you in more quickly. He did with me.

They do, I had private diagnosis and then treatment for my cancer in Scotland last year, as you don’t have insurance though if you got a diagnosis (and hopefully not) it would be very expensive so the best bet would be to get the diagnosis and then go back into the nhs system possibly.

I’m near Aberdeen and am seeing Dr Madari at Albyn hospital and really like her - my GP who flagged me for urgent endometrial cancer screening but when it went into the NHS system the hospital told me they downgraded it to semi urgent and the wait lists looked to be around 28 weeks for a first appointment.

However, even in private here there’s waits - I had to wait nine weeks for my screening hysteroscopy as it needed a general anaesthetic due to the tilt of my uterus and am now four weeks through a six week wait for the lab results from the biopsy due to lab backlogs (although the hysteroscopy looked clear so I’m feeling a bit calmer). Albyn was great at squeezing me in for an ultrasound though when it said they had none available so it is really worth calling private hospitals and asking.

As I wasn’t high risk this wait has felt manageable and I’ve had reassurance from my gynae that this is ok but it’s still hard when I can see the guidelines (in my case British menopause society) were not being met. The NHS waits are so completely unacceptable, I can’t understand why the government isn’t falling over this - it seems there’s no real political pressure on them to deal with it.

I would recommend Dr Andrew Paterson at Ross Hall in Glasgow. https://www.circlehealthgroup.co.uk/consultants/andrew-paterson?tabId=Ross+Hall+Hospital

I saw him in 2022 as I had been waiting for an NHS appointment for a scan for over a year during covid. I don't have private insurance so I paid for the scan and he sent me back to NHS as an urgent referral.

Thank you for your recommendations. Yes, the prices are eye-watering and even the private hospitals have long waits. It does seem to be worse in Scotland than in England. A 9 week target to start treatment for cancer, rather than the 2 week target in England. And then that target being missed for 2/3rds of women! And ovarian cancer is one of those cancers that is often caught too late and needs to be dealt with very urgently. It also astonishes me that this isn't taken more seriously.

Unfortunately, a lot of the good ones have retired. If still in practice try Cameron Martin at Spire Edinburgh or Rosemary Cochrane at the Edinburgh Practice.

I use Paul Dewart at Spire Murrayfield. It's a few years since i last had treatment but usually got an appointment fairly quickly. They'll want you to have an initial consultation as they'll then need to refer you for the ultrasound (or other tests).
I had treatment at Ross Hall or you could also try Nuffield hospitals.

Dr Paul Dewart at Spire Edinburgh is great. You will find the private hospitals are now busier, this is due to the NHS failing us, so you may need to wait a little longer for an appointment.

Another recommendation for Dr Cameron Martin at Spire Murrayfield.

For the sake of anyone in a similar situation, it turns out that it's possible to book a private scan with a referral from your GP, without having had a private consultation at that stage. And the waiting time is shorter than I was originally told. It's been helpful to have some recommendations - thank you. NB as far as I can tell Rosemary Cochrane has retired.

She has retired, she was on her way out about 5 years when I went to Spire.

Rosemary Cochrane now consults from the Edinburgh Practice for menopause issues - not sure if she still does wider gynae now.

You could consider going somewhere else in Europe for quick treatment. Maybe Copenhagen Denmark or somewhere you’ll find English widely spoken - the Netherlands? I doubt the prices will be much higher than private in the U.K.? I’ve never tried this though.

I wonder whether people have started to go abroad, and how easy/difficult that is to do. I remember talking to a nurse from Switzerland soon after Covid. She said that things had got back to normal almost immediately. She said that in Switzerland you can choose between going to your GP and going to a hospital A & E department, and if you don't like the first piece of advice you're given, you can just go somewhere else for a second opinion. She said that people complain if they have to wait longer than an hour in A & E there.

I really hope you are sorted @greyskiesgreysea . We recently had a similar experience - my teenage son told me he'd found a testicular lump. The GP saw him that morning and said he would refer urgently but that could be at least a month. (He also said he thought it was nothing sinister but he wasn't an expert).

We have BUPA through DH's work and booked an appointment with a urologist 2 days later. All clear but I dread to think how long we'd have waited on the NHS. My mum has recently had a private hip replacement (costing £15k) because the NHS wait was 2 years.