Doctor recommendations in London UK

Lucy

by IAN MC - 2017-01-06 11:12:16

Welcome to the UK ; could you bring some warm weather with you next time !

As you have some private cover left you may as well use it before you experience the joys of our NHS . One  important observation :-

-  medical care is no better in the private sector . The same doctors work in both sectors BUT if you go privately  you can see him / her more quickly .

One enormous difference though , in the private sector  you would probably be given a free coffee and biscuits ( which you ARE paying for of course )

I had my PM fitted free by the NHS in Slough which is 20 miles from London but I did go to Harley St Clinic to have an ablation done privately . I went private because I did want a particular electrophysiologist , Dr Vias Markides. He is a Director of the Royal Brompton Hospital which is one of the leading cardiology centres in the world .  He really is a top guy and has private rooms near Harley St. He has published several papers on cardiac arrythmias and pacemaker implantation and lectures on electrophysiology. ( His tel no is  020 38 113 991 )

Two other Drs at the Royal Brompton who have a v good reputation for PM implants are Dr Jonathan Clague and Dr Tom Wong.

Harley St Clinic vs  London Bridge is a difficult one . Both are excellent private hospitals but hospitals are just buildings . The care you get depends solely on the individual Dr who you see . I think London Bridge tends to attract more Drs from south of the river hospitals, and Harley St Clinic atttracts more Drs from North London and from the west.    I could not fault Harley St Clinic in any way.

I don't think you will go wrong no matter what you decide , cardiology care is of a very high standard in the UK

Best of luck

Ian

I agree with Ian

by LondonAndy - 2017-01-06 15:07:27

Welcome!  It's not the hospital, but the people, but I don't think you will have a problem in London.  I can't comment on private hospitals but St Bartholomew's Hospital, near the Barbican and universally known as "Barts", has very modern facilities and several heart hospitals have merged into it to create quite an impressive "centre of excellence".  

One plus about NHS hospitals (I have heard on a number of occasions) is that they have better emergency facilities, and so backup if something goes wrong during surgery is better.  However, as I type this there is a news headline that NHS hospitals are facing a crisis of bed shortages, with people dying on trollies in corridors because of the normal increase in demand during the winter.  I saw this for myself on 26 December, when I took my mother to an Accident and Emergency unit in Kent when she had what turned out to be a "mini-stroke" - her care was excellent, with a CT scan within minutes of the doctor requesting it etc, but around us the nurses were saying that they had run out of both beds and trollies. 

Truth..Rumour...Fact...Opinion...Personal experience.....

by Tattoo Man1 - 2017-01-06 17:23:01

Lucy....you have had, this far, two comments to your, pretty well founded question.

Any response here in PMC can only be seen as a small sample of opinion to ANY question / topic...IAN MC is, by my own experience right on the money (joke ) when it comes to the level of quality care that you might get in the Private--NHS debate....

Private Coffee, a freshly ironed newspaper and a surgeon that opens the door to you with a .." Good morning Ms Lucy B" is not an idiot...these fantastic people are my own personal clients..and I am trading too....''''''who wants to work for poor medics...'''?????

These people work in a sphere that is both Global, but also intensly Local....Performance and Success preceed these people like a litigious monster...Failiour is, for these high fliers nothing less than disaster.

I have known so many big guys....I am on first name terms with two Professors of Cardiology..as in, christmas cards  and my own Cardiologist..Andy.

I am sure that, as IAN MC has pointed out,..they would be more than welcome to take your insurance money...BUT....

Who..and I ask this question to all across the whole wide world..does quarterly sessions with the local cardiac community...free of charge at our local hospital ,..with free refreshments and a good jazz keyboard player....

Mr Andrew Houghton..and 'Beat it Grantham '...thats who...

This is not a 'show off' for our beleauguered NHS...it simply demonstrates that different cultures treat / respond to healthcare in different ways.

If we have a problem its that really good people need to FEEL valued, even when they are right on the edge of what they all truly beleive in.

The whole world of healthcare may well look back and see,..with regret,..that we had so much to be proud of,...and had, with the regret of hindsight,...have now so much to mourn..

Tattoo Man..member of Beat it Grantham..the best Cardiac support group in the World

Thanks!

by lucyb - 2017-01-10 09:10:01

Thanks so much for the comments! I am under no illusion that private care here is better than the NHS, it's purely a timing thing for me at this point because the referral I got though the NHS is a 5 month wait for an appointment and I need to be seen before then! 

I've booked in to see someone at Harley Street for now but I will ask my GP for an NHS referral to the new hear centre at Bart's (it looks great, thanks for telling me about it!)