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Concierge Choice UK is providing GPs with the opportunity to sign up to a new private membership service that they can run alongside their NHS practice to enhance their practice income. The service offers patients who join convenient relaxed consultations (up to 30 minutes), continuity of care and a focus on overall wellbeing.
Concierge Choice UK handles the marketing and sales, directing patients to the GP of their choice and answering any questions.
GPs who join will be able to offer the service to no more than 75 members so will still be able to meet their NHS obligations and the needs of their NHS patients.
GPs can choose what services they offer within the programme and how many patients to accept as members to fit within their NHS commitments, and can set their own costs.
Generally, membership will cost patients £1,200 per year, with follow up appointments costing around £30. With just 30 members, a participating GP can make approx. £30,000/a from the programme, which could be re-invested in their practice.
Concierge Choice UK is building a network of GPs to offer the service. Patients who sign up as members can hand-pick the right GP for them who they will see every time they visit the surgery. This allows GPs to form a long-term, personal relationship with these patients, and ensure continuity of care. A patient can register at a practice with a participating GP only if they are not registered as an NHS patient at that practice.
GPs will provide members with access to same-day or next-day face to face relaxed consultations (up to 30 minutes) and an annual health check-up, lasting up to an hour, which includes blood tests and urine analysis. GPs will use the results of this check-up to set personalised health and wellbeing goals for each patient, which are then monitored and reviewed throughout the year.
GPs will also provide members with their mobile number and email for out of hours concerns. GPs can also choose to offer home visits for an additional cost.
Dr Mark Sweeney, medical director for Concierge Choice UK, said: “I have been an NHS GP for over 25 years, and nowadays it has become harder to offer personalised care, where you form long-term relationships with patients and their families, which was the reason many of us became GPs in the first place. With the Concierge Choice UK programme, to incentivise GPs to remain working within the NHS, we wanted to enable them to form these personal relationships with patients and rediscover one of the most satisfying and rewarding parts of the job, continuity of care.”
Concierge Choice UK have designed the membership programme to work alongside the NHS, and to support it by giving GPs who care for NHS patients an opportunity to offer limited private care in their own time whilst still retaining the benefit of their experience and services within the NHS.
NHS GPs are permitted to generate income through non-NHS sources such as occupational health medicine, sports medicine, acupuncture or private care. Because the Concierge Choice UK membership programme is so limited in nature, the programme offers an alternative way to use the time they would use for these non-NHS services, so their NHS patients are not affected.
54% of 1,500 UK patients surveyed by Concierge Choice UK said they would be interested in paying a membership fee for a range of services, including timely consultations, the ability to contact their GP directly for urgent concerns, an annual physical and advice on overall health and wellbeing.
For more information on the membership programme, visit www.ConciergeChoice.co.uk.