St George’s Surgery Practice Policy on Shared Care
A shared care agreement is where an alternative health care provider (for example a private provider or an NHS Right To Choose provider) asks the GP practice to take over certain aspects of your care which often includes prescribing medications and arranging any monitoring required (such as blood tests).
We do not accept any requests for shared care from private healthcare providers. If you pay to see a private GP or specialist then you will need to arrange for them to prescribe any medications that they have advised and arrange any blood tests or monitoring needed.
Shared Care Requests for ADHD medications
We have recently updated our practice policy around shared care agreements for ADHD and the GP partners have decided that we are not able to accept shared care with private or NHS Right to Choose providers. This is because the monitoring and prescribing of ADHD medications is not an NHS funded service for GP practices and this practice does not have the staffing capacity or clinical expertise to be able to provide safe and effective shared care.
Patients who have paid privately for their ADHD treatment will need to continue to do so. Any patients wishing to be referred for ADHD diagnosis or treatment under the NHS should book a routine telephone appointment with your named GP to discuss this.
Patients who have been seen by an NHS Right to Choose ADHD provider will continue to receive NHS treatment from their ADHD provider and should contact them to arrange ongoing prescriptions and monitoring.
We will decline all requests for shared care for ADHD medications and it remains the responsibility of your ADHD specialist (whether private or NHS Right to Choose) to continue to prescribe any medications now and in the future.
For patients under the Gloucestershire NHS Adult ADHD service or the Gloucestershire NHS Paediatrics or CAMHS service we will consider requests for shared care on an individual basis once we have received a copy of the shared care request. We are unable to agree to shared care if we have not received an individual shared care request.