It is important you consider the terms of engagement below while making a choice to access child and adolescent psychiatric treatment privately. The terms are outlined below -
- A referral for child psychiatry assessment may be made by self, GP, psychologists, schools or another health professional. We do not offer medico-legal work or expert witness assessments.
- Payment may include a booking fee deducted from final fees which are sessional, please refer to fee structure here. We now require all self-pay patients to pre-pay in advance of their appointments.
- Payments have to be made in 2 days from the date of invoice. The invoice note will detail the interest rate that may be payable in case of late payments. Full charges will incur for cancellations 72 hours prior to the appointment and no-shows.
- If you have medical insurance, they must provide you with a letter of pre-authorisation, without this claims cannot be made on your behalf.
- You are responsible for checking with your insurer if you need to pay an excess or have a co-pay arrangement and arrange to pay this to us directly.
- You should note that you will have to accept to pay any shortfall in the event the medical insurance does not pay the fees in full.
- Please check with your insurance company if they will limit how many out-patient appointments they would authorise and pay for in case the treatment requires regular follow-up.
- All payments, whether made by insurance companies or by self-paying patients are to be made electronically using BACS unless we agree to other arrangements. Non-payment of fees can lead to us suspending services, you should however be able to avail yourself of these from the NHS via your GP.
- Please refer here for information on the boundaries of confidentiality
- For information on what conditions I would assess and treat, please refer here. I may on basis of referral information advise another service and decline work in certain situations to ensure the best interest and needs of the child and family were met adequately. If beyond the assessment or during the course of the treatment if it so happens that the needs become complex, or risks to self and others escalate we would recommend you back to NHS care via your GP. We do not offer urgent or emergency care and are strictly an outpatient provision with planned appointments once every 4-8 weeks.
- Any initial enquiries are usually made by email, but I would speak with you on the phone once I have accepted a referral prior to the first appointment.
- The service on offer is strictly a planned outpatient provision. This is not different to similar services provided privately elsewhere or in NHS. In the event of an emergency, while I will endeavour to be available to guide you, you will have to access emergency and urgent care services via local / nearest accident and emergency.
- I may advise inpatient treatment on rare occasions, this can be arranged privately if you have medical insurance (they must source the bed) or via NHS.
- During the course of our engagement, if clinically it was appropriate or required or indeed you made a choice to access care from NHS - your GP would require to do it with supporting evidence provided by us. Please refer to the principles for the interface between NHS and private medical treatment here.
- Correspondence - from receiving a referral to sharing any with you and GP / referrer any reports, I would do this electronically. I use third-party servers/email and fax services (like most of us would) and would not be responsible for data loss in transit or accesses maliciously. Any information that I record and store however will be on an encrypted drive in keeping with data protection laws.
- If you are open on my list I will provide reports at no extra cost following an appointment. Fees may apply for updated letters and reports outside scheduled appointments. All letters are sent to patient/s as good practice. The Data Protection Laws are clear that as information within clinic letters relates to a given person, it is for that person (parents in case of minors) to determine who the information is shared with - typically we encourage and recommend you share this with GP, school and other professionals as appropriate. We are a paper-free service and do not send printed material by post. We do not email reports to GP surgeries unless they contact us with your express consent. The only exception when we may contact professionals from agencies directly is when there is a clear context of child protection or safeguarding concerns.
- Unless you wish to make private arrangements, I will expect the GP to arrange all medical investigations as needed - these may include blood tests, scans, and ECG / EEG. GPs will also be expected to provide repeat prescriptions on advice from an independent specialist. You would be responsible for making appointments with the GP in a timely manner to progress the above further if it applied to your situation.
- This note is not exhaustive and special circumstances will be dealt with as need be, in any event, you would be informed along the way if the engagement was to be outside the terms above. Please check and ask if you have any questions in regard to the above at any stage of engagement.
