At Yorkley & Bream we receive shared care requests from a number of different private clinics to take over the prescription of specialist medications. It is important we only take over prescribing in General Practice where it is safe and appropriate for us to do so.

Shared Care agreements are recommendations and we do not have a contractual requirement to follow them. As a Practice we will only consider ‘accepting’ a shared care agreement if the following criteria are met:

• The Private Provider is registered with CQC.
• The requester (for shared care) is registered with either the GMC (General Medical Council) or NMC (Nursing and Midwifery Council)
• The requester supplies a comprehensive shared care document eg. Information on the medication, dose adjustments and clear monitoring instructions.
• The patient agrees to remain supported/ supervised by the private provider for the initiation period and a reasonable time after establishment of their medication has started (min 12 months of therapy).
• Our clinical team need to agree with the content of the Shared Care Plan and feel that it is safe, appropriate, and within our competency as General Practitioners to follow.

Please Note: We do not perform blood tests or other investigations at the request of Private Clinics in order to help them initiate treatments. Requests to provide these services by private clinics will be declined as it would be an inappropriate use of NHS resources.

If a private Consultant informs you to arrange or to expect to hear from your NHS GP to arrange such tests, then this is incorrect. You should, at the time, remind the consultant that all tests need to be carried out privately and ask for them to do so.

If the private consultant cannot provide the test service (or, for example, you are unable to travel to the private clinic) then you will need to organise tests locally at your own expense. We cannot advise on which services are available locally.