Private GP · Kent
Everyone depends on you. Nobody is watching you.
Your family, your business, the people who ring you when it goes wrong. You hold all of it together, and not one part of the system is looking at whether you're holding up. I'm the doctor whose job is that.
An evening at your table. I read the results, letters and scan reports you have been carrying, and tell you what they actually say.
Where to start
Start at the first step. Each one pays for the next.
People arrive here for one of three reasons.
- Someone close to them was diagnosed with something that could have been caught earlier.
- The job got bigger, the hours got longer, and they want to know their health is holding up under it.
- They've never had a doctor who knows their history, so every appointment starts from nothing.
However you got here, it starts the same way.
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Step one
The First Visit
£550
An evening at your kitchen table. You are carrying more information about your own health than anyone has ever sat down and read: the work medical, the health check somebody bought you, the hospital letter with one sentence you never understood, two years of nights on your wrist. I read all of it with you, take a full history properly, and you keep the summary. Nothing to book, nowhere to drive to and no blood tests.
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Step two
The Assessment
£1,750
Half a day with one doctor. The full panel, an unhurried examination, and a written plan for the next ten years that is yours whether you go further or not.
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Step three
Membership
£4,800 a year
Someone to act on the plan with. A doctor who knows your history, answers when you call, looks after your family, and is there when something serious lands. Fifty adults and no more.
Each fee comes off the next in full. Go from the visit to the Assessment and the evening has cost you nothing. Join within thirty days of receiving your written plan and the Assessment comes off your membership too.
Two other ways in, if the ladder isn't yours.
- The Bio-Audit. A forensic read on whether your biology is keeping up with your work. Your company can pay, and never sees the results.
- Sentinel. Hormone and performance-compound monitoring, for men already on treatment.
The Long View
Normal is a range. You need a direction.
One blood test tells you where you sit against everyone else your age. It doesn't tell you which way you're going, and the direction is the part you can act on.
So this is a set of biomarkers chosen one by one, and I can tell you why each is there and what I left off. The same ones are measured again every year, by the same doctor, because that's the only way a direction shows up.
Heart and circulation
How much has already accumulated, and how fast. ApoB counts the particles that drive arterial disease, which cholesterol alone does not. Lp(a) you inherit and measure once. Then blood pressure on both arms and a resting 12-lead ECG.
Metabolism and inflammation
Whether this started years ago and nothing has said so yet. Fasting insulin moves long before HbA1c does, so I measure both, with hs-CRP for the background inflammation that drives much of the rest.
How you are ageing
How well you are actually holding up. Oxygen uptake is measured at every stage rather than predicted from work rate, so the threshold your plan is written against comes straight from expired gas. Then body composition, grip strength and balance, which say more about your next twenty years than your weight does.
What you're actually buying
When a big decision lands, I'm already on your side of the table.
The long game
I measure what decides your next twenty years, act when something starts moving, and write your plan around your history rather than an average of everyone your age.
The day something needs deciding
The scan that shows something unexpected, the specialist with three options, your father's diagnosis that changes what your own history means. I read the scan with you, I'm on the call with the consultant, and I tell you what I'd do if you were my own family. I come to your house when that is what the situation needs.
What you are paying for is a doctor who already knows you, sitting on your side of the table, on the day the decisions get made and you cannot think straight.
How I decide
More is easy to sell. I built this the other way.
Every test has to clear two questions before it goes on the baseline. Is there good evidence behind it, and will the result change what we do. Both, or it stays off, and that holds whoever is asking, including me.
The list is not fixed
I review the list as new evidence lands, so something earns its place when the research is strong enough and comes off when something better exists.
Leaving something off is not a refusal
If your history, your examination or your results make a test the right thing to do, we do it. It simply doesn't go on everyone's list by default.
No wide nets
Test a well person on everything and something always looks wrong when nothing is, and then you're paying in worry, in money, and sometimes in a procedure you never needed.
I earn the same whether I investigate you or reassure you. So when I say you don't need something, nothing rides on which way it goes.
What is missing
Nobody is holding your health.
Your GP holds a record, which is a list of things that already happened. Your insurer holds a claims file and opens it when you're ill. If you've had a private health check, somebody holds a report from a day two years ago. Your watch holds two years of nights nobody has read.
All of that exists. None of it is held. Nobody reads it together, nobody notices when one part starts disagreeing with another, and nobody rings you.
That's the job. I hold your whole picture, I read it again every year, and I call you when something moves. Eight in the morning to eight at night, seven days, and you get me the same day. When you need seeing rather than answering, I come to you.
You keep your NHS GP. This sits alongside the NHS, not instead of it.
"Not really understanding what my body was trying to tell me when in crisis."
"Lack of proper understanding on what was going on in my own body to cause my issues, and how to overcome them."
Membership
What it costs.
One fee covers all of it. The annual measurements and the plan that comes out of them, the direct line, home visits, every letter and result you have collected turned into one clear record, and me in the room when something serious lands.
£4,800
a year, one adult
or £480 a month
£8,400
a year, a household of two adults
or £840 a month
Two children under 18 are included, then £50 a month for each additional child. Paying monthly rather than yearly comes to £5,760 and £10,080 across the year.
One fee covers me, and it covers your annual panel.
No charge per visit, per call or per referral. Anything beyond the panel passes through at cost: scans, specialist fees, extra tests. You pay what I am charged, which is a doctor's price rather than the one you would be quoted arranging it yourself, and nothing is ordered until you have seen the figure and agreed to it.
The price you join at is the price you keep.
Whatever you pay when you join is held for three years. After that it rises with inflation and nothing else. It never resets to whatever the current rate happens to be. That hold is written into your membership terms, not just promised on a page.
You can try the whole thing and pay nothing.
The Assessment is £1,750. Half a day, one doctor, and a written plan for the next ten years. Join within thirty days of receiving your written plan and that fee comes off your membership in full.
If the first ninety days of membership don't convince you, I refund every penny you have paid me. Only the laboratory costs are not refundable, because they are paid to a third party. You keep the assessment and you keep the plan.
The only thing you can lose here is the time it takes to find out.
Common questions
The questions people actually ask.
What does a private GP do that the NHS can't?
The NHS treats you when you're ill, and it does that well. What it doesn't have is the time to watch your health across the years and act before a problem starts. That's the gap this fills: one doctor who knows you and holds the whole picture. More in what a private GP does that the NHS doesn't, and is a private GP worth it?
Should I start with membership or the Bio-Audit?
Membership is a doctor for the whole of your life and your family's. The Bio-Audit is a one-off forensic read on whether your biology is keeping up with what you're asking of it, and your company can pay for it without seeing results, findings or attendance.
How much does membership cost?
It's £4,800 a year, or £480 a month, for an individual, and £8,400 a year, or £840 a month, for a household of two adults with two children under 18 included, then £50 a month for each additional child. Membership and fees has the full detail, and how much a private GP costs in the UK sets out the wider market.
What happens if you are ill or away?
Cover is arranged with another GP who has access to your record. Planned absence is notified at least three weeks ahead, and for the most part I stay contactable and answer while I'm away. Where I can't, or where something needs seeing in person, the covering doctor carries it and you're told who at the time.
I already have private medical insurance. Isn't this the same thing?
No, and you should keep the policy. Insurance pays for treatment once something has gone wrong, and it's good at that. Read its own exclusions, though, and you'll find it stops covering a condition once that condition becomes long term, which is what most of this turns into. It also only pays out through a referral letter, and that letter has to carry your history, your medications and what's already been tested. Whoever writes it decides what your policy is worth. That's the part I do.
Do I keep my NHS GP?
Yes. Nothing here changes your NHS registration, and I'll write to your NHS GP if you want, so the two records agree. This sits alongside the NHS rather than replacing it, and it isn't urgent, emergency or out-of-hours care: for that you still call 999 or 111.
Longer answers are in the journal: health checks and health management are not the same thing, and is a private GP membership worth it for a family?
A practice of fifty
There are fifty places. The fit has to be right.
I look after fifty adults and no more, so I can be fully present for each one. It is a fixed number, so when the book is full it stays full until someone leaves. It starts with an evening at your kitchen table.
"Personal and holistic. Understanding the whole picture, not a figures-only approach, and listening rather than working to a threshold."
The Long View, in two pages.
The few things that actually decide how long and how well you live, and how to tell the signal from the noise. I'll send it to you now.