Etiquette, Terms and Conditions – Updated April 2024
Regent Street Clinic™ is a private medical facility offering a range of private medical services to fee paying patients.
The following is a reminder of the essential tenets and principles of our organisation and the expectations placed upon both the clinic and it’s service users.
1. The clinic does not replace the NHS GP as the main patient advocate and primary care practitioner. We advise all service users to notify their NHS GP of their visit to our clinics for optimal continuity of care as per the recommendations in Good Medical practice by the General Medical Council.
2. The clinic celebrates the NHS as an excellent healthcare model/provider and aims to work with it in a spirit of harmonious co-operation.
3. The clinic will always urge patients to allow us to share medical information relating to their visit to our clinics with their NHS GP practice.
4. The clinic does not offer an “out of hours service” and provides services during working daytime hours only between Monday-Saturday. Please see each individual clinic’s listed timings.
5. Clinic sessions and opening times are subject to change, sometimes at the last minute, due to unforeseen circumstances or otherwise.
6. These terms and conditions form a “contract” for service provision with individual service users.
7. The clinic reserves the right to refuse services to any individual. No reason needs to be given once a management decision has been made.
8. Rudeness or threatening/inappropriate behaviour of any description towards members of our staff carries a zero-tolerance approach.
9. You should allow enough time to attend the clinic for your appointment. The following is a rough estimation of how long you should reasonably allow for our clinics to service your healthcare need:
Service |
Time that should be allowed (mins) |
Notes |
| Private GP (new consultation) | 60 | Please bring any NHS records, copies |
| Private GP (follow-up) | 30 | of test results and current prescriptions to show the doctor at consultation. |
| Facial aesthetics (new consultation) | 60 | A through facial assessment and consultation is provided free of charge |
| Facial aesthetics (follow-up) | 30 | Informed consent is required at each new treatment visit. |
| Sexual health | 30 | Please attend with a full bladder. |
| Travel clinic | 60 | All travel clinic appointments need a thorough risk assessment for each specific trip with bespoke advice about vaccinations, non vaccine-preventable diseases and anti-malarials etc. Please do not attend the clinic if you do not have time to undergo this assessment thoroughly. Our health care professionals are responsible and accountable for helping to reduce the risk of illness whilst abroad. |
| Occupational Health | 30 | Please bring a form of photographic ID |
| OGUK medical | 60 | Please bring a form of photographic ID |
10. Our clinics are very busy and we do not “guarantee” that you will be seen at the exact time of your appointment. The very nature of dynamic medical centres seeing walk in patients and urgent cases means that there will be occasions where certain medical situations are prioritised leading to a delay in individuals being seen.
Walk in patients must be prepared to sit and wait to be seen. The average wait time in our clinics across the whole of our business is under 30 minutes.
11. If you are early and we are able to see you earlier than your appointment time then we will make every attempt to do so.
12. Parking arrangements, metered parking tickets, time urgency regarding other engagements and so forth all need to be factored in by each patient to ensure that they have managed their time appropriately and are not presenting overly stressed during their visit or indeed displacing their time urgency/stress.
13. All patients in our waiting rooms are private patients. We do not offer any NHS services. All prescriptions issued are private prescriptions which incur a charge for issue and dispensing, which is unrelated to the NHS. Similarly services which may be ”free” in the NHS (for example certain vaccines) will incur a cost. Please see the Price List.
14. High patient numbers and busy waiting rooms are increasingly likely to be encountered in the private/independent sector as patient demand for same day primary care services increases.
15. Paying for a private service does not mean that you are paying to be seen without a wait.
16. Paying for a private service does not mean that you can be demanding or rude towards our staff.
17. Paying for a private service means that our staff will be more likely to be able to offer you an appointment at a date/time that suits you and that you are more likely to be seen by a clinician on the day of your choice, without a restriction in length of appointment time.
18. Paying for a private service also means that any tests, investigations, treatments, interventions or referrals will be able to be arranged on the day of your appointment, without any delay, leading to an expeditious and early resolution of your healthcare concern in an optimal manner.
19. Paying for a private service also means that you may be prescribed or recommended medication and treatment pathways that are restricted or unavailable in the NHS, without austerity or cost-cutting measures.
20. Our clinic will treat all service users with respect, courtesy, openness and politeness in a non-judgmental and patient-centred way and we expect this basic level of decorum to be reciprocated.
21. Paying for a Telemedicine appointment does not mean that you will necessarily be prescribed any medication, as this will be entirely dependent upon the clinical judgment of our medical team and on our Policies and Procedures. Please note that you may be advised to attend for a face to face in-clinic appointment with our medical team at any of our UK locations where this is felt to be more appropriate than a virtual consultation – for example where a physical examination or further investigations are indicated. This is in line with current General Medical Council guidelines. The fee paid for the Telemedicine consultation (£50) will be deducted from any further costs.
No refund will be given once you have received a Telemedicine consultation, regardless of the outcome.
22. Examples of medication that we do not routinely prescribe include: Sleeping tablets (inc Zopiclone, Zimovane), opiate painkillers (such as Tramadol, Codeine, Morphine etc) and medications reserved for specialist prescription such as pain clinic analgesics (eg Gabapentin), Roaccutane (dermatologist only), fertility drugs and mental health medications (such as Lithium, Carbemazepine and anti-psychotics).
We are happy to refer patients requiring specialist medications to secondary care consultants for this to be actioned.
23. Our medical team may decide to treat suspected infections empirically however this must be accompanied by laboratory testing as per practice policy (updated April 2024) and national guidelines, for the following reasons:
i. To confirm or refute the postulated diagnosis
ii. To identify the most suitable treatment option depending upon the result
iii. To reduce the incidence of inappropriate antibiotic use and associated resistance
24. Travel vaccines that are part of a course such as hepatitis B, rabies, Japanese encephalitis and tick-borne encephalitis must be paid for in advance on the first visit to ensure that we are able secure the vaccines to complete each individual course. This is important given the chronic shortage of many vaccines in the UK in 2024. We will be allocating the rest of the vaccines to each individual and this cannot be guaranteed unless they are paid for in advance. Once an individual has paid for a course of vaccines in advance, no refund will be issued for non-completion of the schedule.
Medication supplied, including antimalarials and antibiotics, are non refundable once purchased. Similarly, payments for all investigations, once they have been paid for in readiness to be forwarded to our laboratories for analysis, are strictly non refundable. Paying for your investigations is voluntary and a result of the decision you have taken to help manage your medical issue.
We are a primary care service and do not have any service level agreements with private medical insurers, some of whom do cover private primary care and others who do not. It is the responsibility of the service user only to clarify the position relating to insurance coverage prior to agreeing to investigations and treatment. We are happy to complete medical forms to assist in this process by notifying the insurer of the reason for each recommendation.
This page has been devised to provide a transparent and realistic picture of the likely waiting times at our busy clinics so that patients’ time and expectations can be managed.
The Management
Regent Street Clinic™