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We aim to offer our patients an unhurried, high quality GP service, with continuity of care at its core, and allow them to make the choice about whether to access secondary care on the NHS or privately, and in all things to make meaningful choices about treatment options.

If you think about it, paying a fixed fee for any service for which demand is unpredictable is “betting against the house” – and the house is always going to win (or go out of business).

There are some private practices that offer an all-inclusive package for around £100 per month (over the age of 50). I would hope that a typical 50 year old would need to pay considerably less than £100/month in consultation fees, but we would expect to be there for them when they need us.

Most concierge-style services that we are aware of set a limit on the number of contacts in a year. Furthermore, many seek to attract the healthy and undertake assessments and tests that are not indicated, and therefore have significant potential to cause harm such as anxiety and complications of unnecessary treatment.

Further, such an arrangement necessarily encourages people to consult when they might not necessarily need to.

One of the challenges for NHS General Practice is that it is free at the point of delivery and therefore has had placed on it expectations (in terms of access, helping people who are not ill, etc) that it could never meet.

We want to form long term, adult-adult relationships with our patients, where we are no longer the gate-keepers, but can help to guide them through their options when they are ill.

Additionally, our practice has a strong emphasis on not recommending unnecessary investigations or treatments, for fear of doing harm. In private medicine, where one is paid for activity, we believe it is important to resist the temptation to encourage unnecessary consultations.

Finally, consider how eager we will be to book each appointment if that is the only way we get paid! We certainly do not want to become embroiled in contractual disagreements about whether we are failing to offer appointments of sufficient length or readily enough, or whether our patients use of our service is “fair” – hardly a respectful interaction!

Our approach might not be for everyone. We consider it to be ethical where others might not always be. Our price list is at www.FormbyGP.com/pricing.

We do, however, offer Priority Club membership, benefits of each include a guarantee of access, waiving of our prescription fees, half price text consultations and access to our community forum. If this appeals, why not ask at your next appointment whether it could be right for you!

We are of course happy to prescribe most medication that you might need. In practice, we have a little more prescribing freedom than an NHS GP might. In particular, once you are stable on a particular treatment, we can often prescribe much longer courses.

Because of that, we don’t really operate a repeat prescription system. Instead, we prescribe enough to last you until your next consultation with us. So, if you need a prescription, do just book an appointment and we can prescribe as much as is sensible.

We can prescribe controlled drugs if you are happy for us to share this information with other prescribers involved in your care, including your NHS GP.

Our prescriptions should be accepted by any pharmacy in the United Kingdom. Whenever possible, we will give you a paper prescription which you can take to the pharmacy of your choice. If that is not possible, we can send the prescription to you by email, which you can then show to the majority of pharmacies in the UK.

We make a charge for each item that we prescribe. We waive that charge for our Priority Club members. Our current prices can be reviewed at www.FormbyGP.com/pricing.

Regrettably, we are unable to issue NHS prescriptions.

Your pharmacy will charge you for dispensing your medication, even if you do not pay NHS prescription charges. It is likely that prices will vary, so you might like to shop around before choosing a pharmacy.

Please say if you would prefer us to dispense your medication for you to save you going to a pharmacy. We can usually order in whatever you need for collection on the next working day. We use the same suppliers as pharmacies, so our prices are very competitive.

We generally offer to prescribe pretty inexpensive medication where possible, and will warn you if we expect what we prescribe to be more pricey.

Taking all of this into account, especially bearing in mind that we can issue longer prescriptions, letting us prescribe your regular medication can be surprisingly affordable and convenient.

With your consent, we routinely share our consultation notes with your NHS GP. They will therefore be able to see what we have prescribed for you. Whether they agree with our prescribing recommendations and are happy to repeat our prescriptions is of course entirely up to them.

We are often asked if we are able to access your NHS GP record. Because we are outside the NHS, we don’t automatically have access to it. However, this isn’t normally a problem: in many cases, we are happy to rely on information you provide us regarding your health conditions, medication, and allergies, and we will ask you about these before your appointment by means of our registration form.

You have the right to receive your record in electronic format from your NHS GP if you ask for it electronically (a “Subject Access Request“). If you would like, you may then share it with us, either by emailing it to Clinical@FormbyGP.net, or uploading it from our registration form. Often, a summary of your record will suffice. Sometimes, however, we will need your full record, such as if you ask ask us to write certain reports. It can sometimes be helpful to know recent blood test results, to save us duplicating work privately; if you have online access, you will often be able to view your results there.

With your consent, we will usually keep your NHS GP and any other relevant professionals updated. If you would prefer us not to, that’s generally fine too, so long as you are happy for us not to prescribe any controlled drugs. If we feel that information-sharing is particularly important, such as in particularly complex cases, we may broach the subject with you again and explain why we would recommend information-sharing.

If you have been asked for a medical report or examination, we can help! Simply tell us what you need and share the request or form that you have received using our online form and we can give you a quote.

Many such reports – such as an HGV medical “D4” – we will be happy to complete during your consultation for no extra charge. On the other hand, some might simply require us to review your GP record, and we might not even need to see you.

Please email us a copy of your NHS GP record before your consultation. For some reports (including HGV medicals), a summary of your GP record will suffice.

Some reports, however, expect the examining doctor to have access to your full GP record. For these, please download from your NHS GP your full record and then email or upload it to us.

If in doubt, just email us the blank report or form and we can advise you what we would need.

There are a small number of organisations that ask a doctor to certify that you are fit for a particular activity that they organise. At the time of writing, the Paris marathon is an example. It is very difficult for any doctor to say this, as there is no way for them to be certain that the organisers will have in place proper safeguards, not is it possible to predict that your health will not change before or during the event. We would be happy, however, to provide a summary of your medical history and an opinion as to whether that is likely to be problematic.

We can organise many tests directly, and as GPs we can diagnose and manage a great many conditions ourselves.

Sometimes, we will offer to make a referral asking another professional or organisation whom we trust for their opinion using the specialised resources and expertise at their disposal.

If you have any concerns about your health, do book an appointment with one of our expert GPs. We will undertake our own assessement, collect any information and tests necessary to support any referral, and advise whether a referral would be appropriate.

We will advise you which specialty, organisation or individual we believe is most likely to accept the referral and to give the most helpful opinion. This is the reason why patients, specialists and insurers value the input of GPs in the referral process.

We will of course facilitate your preferences as best we can, mindful that this might sometimes result in “going round in circles” if the preferred specialist is either not available, too busy, or feels they cannot help.

If you have a fixed view about the need for a particular referral, we may be able to add less value to the process. You might like to contact the specialist directly, as some do accept self-referrals.

In any case, when we make a referral, we will usually let you have a copy of the referral letter. This will put you in control, so that you can produce it in case of communication difficulties, and so that you can take it to a different, similarly qualified, individual or organisation, should you subsequently discover that they are more convenient. Feel free to search for other providers yourself. If you happen to know of any specialists who live nearby, you might like to suggest they consider using our premises!

If we make an NHS referral, you will very often be able to take that referral letter to a private provider. Please be mindful that it does not always work the other way around, as it can sometimes be more difficult to refer to NHS providers: they are often not even allowed to accept referrals which some might consider less appropriate; they also often expect the GP to undertake more preliminary assessment, the expense of which we would otherwise seek to save you.

The NHS has a waiting list tracker tool called “My Planned Care”: this means you can see how long you are likely to be waiting for your first outpatient appointment, and for your treatment/surgery, if you have been referred to an NHS hospital. The waiting list figures are grouped by department, so it’s not an exact guide, and for urgent problems you are likely to be seen more quickly than these figures, while for less urgent issues you may be waiting longer.

Here are the figures for the Trust that includes Aintree Hospital, and here are the figures for the Trust which includes Southport & Ormskirk.

Bodies are so much more complex than cars! Before every consultation, we will check your blood pressure, pulse and weight (amongst other things). You probably don’t need us to tell you to lead a healthy lifestyle!

When considering tests, our usual approach is to recommend targeted testing for conditions that you seem to be at increased risk of. Typically this would be based on new symptoms you have noticed, but your family history, lifestyle and occupation might also give clues.

Some private clinics perform a vast array of tests on every adult that consults them. We believe we can add more value by being more judicious, thus saving you money and worry, and – most importantly – harmful treatment for conditions that might never have troubled you. This is why we describe Formby GP as “ethical”.

When appropriate, we can organise extensive blood tests, ECGs, x-rays and scans and more, and we will work towards offering more and more of these on site.