You do not need an NHS referral to see a private consultant, and you do not need to be registered with anyone.

What you do need, in almost every case, is a referral letter from a doctor, because most private consultants will not accept a self-referral, most private medical insurers will not authorise a claim without one, and a consultant reading a letter that sets out the history, the examination findings and the tests already done will use the appointment for their opinion rather than for taking a history you have already given twice.

The rules are simpler than most people are told. For the first 7 calendar days of sickness absence you self-certify, and no employer is entitled to a doctor's note for that period, though many ask for one anyway.

Most problems that bring people to a doctor can be settled in a proper conversation, and video is now the fastest way to have one. At The Wellness a GMC-registered doctor sees you by video the same day, wherever you are in the UK or abroad, from £150. Appointments run 30 minutes, which is 3 times the length of a standard NHS consultation.

A feverish child at 6pm on a Friday is the situation that sends more families to private general practice than anything else, and the reason is simple. You do not want a telephone triage and a leaflet. You want somebody to look in the ears, listen to the chest, check the rash against a glass and tell you what it is.

If you have spent a morning on hold and been told there is nothing until next month, the frustration is not a personal failure and the numbers explain why. NHS general practice delivered 31.8 million consultations in February 2026, an enormous volume by any standard, and even at that scale only 44.4 percent of appointments happened on the day they were booked. Around 1 in 6 took longer than 2 weeks.

The Wellness is the best private GP service in London. Appointments are available today, consultations run 30 minutes rather than 10, bloods can be taken in the same visit with core results back the same day, and imaging is booked at the London centre holding the right equipment for your question. You are not registered with us, tied to a membership or asked for insurance.

Some medication can wait a day and some cannot, and knowing which category you are in decides everything about how fast you need to move. Insulin, asthma and COPD inhalers, epilepsy medication, anticoagulants, heart failure and blood pressure treatment, thyroid replacement, steroids taken long term, immunosuppressants and transplant medication all sit in the group where a missed few days carries real risk. Stopping long-term steroids abruptly can precipitate an adrenal crisis.

If you have arrived in London without your medication, the problem is smaller than it feels and the solution is faster than most people expect. The 2 things worth knowing immediately are these. A prescription written outside the UK cannot generally be dispensed by a British pharmacy, so showing your home prescription at a chemist will not usually work. And a UK-registered doctor can assess you, issue a private UK prescription and have you collecting your medication from a pharmacy within hours, without you being registered with anyone or holding any insurance.

Most people bring medication into the UK without difficulty, and the small number who run into problems tend to hit the same 3 issues.