Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps hi Department has taken to support GP practices who have taking on patients coming from private healthcare backgrounds.

The National Health Service and general practices (GPs) are free at the point of use, and anyone is entitled to register with an NHS GP regardless of whether they have had private healthcare before.

Under the GP Contract, a contractor must not host private paid-for GP services that fall within the scope of NHS funded primary medical services, and must not themselves, or through another person, advertise the provision of private services using the same written or electronic means used to advertise the NHS funded primary medical services they provide.

This does not prevent individual GPs from offering purely private GP services to non-registered patients, although these services must be outside the agreed medical services and separate to the services provided to their NHS patient list and on alternative premises which are not NHS-funded. This is intended to safeguard the model of comprehensive NHS primary medical care and ensure that the line between NHS and private practice does not become blurred.

The British Medical Association provides guidance to GPs on its website for their responsibility in responding to private health care.