Does anyone know whether it’s faster to get treatment privately? I’ve been reading lots of delays up to 12 weeks which cannot be right.
Is the a duty of care timeline to start treatment ? Getting my results this week and worrying about everything but more about treatment delays?
I can share my own experience.
After increasing pain diagnosed as arthritis back in July last year, I was eventually referred for an MRI in Feb. Results came through 48 hours later via my GP, “destruction of sacro-illiac joint consistent with metastatic disease”. My GP was shocked. I wasn’t. I had been back and forth to the surgery several times and I wasn’t getting much sympathy. It was ‘take paracetamol and ibruprofen’ and go away. Eventually, I was offered a non-urgent physio appt which came through 2 months later. It was the physio who realised things were definitely not right and referred me for the MRI.
My GP spotted that I had BUPA from my notes and suggested I use it to see an oncologist urgently. I saw the consultant privately just 3 days later. I had my first IV treatment (bisphosphonate) the day after. The week after I had a top to toe MRI and CT scans.
In the meantime, I was still in the NHS system. I got an appt through for more MRI and CT scans on the NHS. The date for these scans were 5 weeks after my original scan with the NHS which confirmed the diagnosis of mets. I phoned up and explained I was being treated privately and expected to hear no more. Two weeks later I got a letter for an appt with an oncologist. I again rang and explained I was being treated privately. Had I been going through the NHS for my treatment It would have been fully 10 weeks from my MRI on the NHS and seeing a specialist on the NHS. In those 10 weeks under private care, I had surgery, two weeks of radiotherapy to my bone mets and started on chemo. I also have lung mets.
There are pros and cons.
Pros: You get your treatment plan in place quickly. You start treatment sooner. You see the head man at your appts.
Cons: You can feel isolated and unable to share your experience with others. My chemo takes place in a private room in a private hospital, so I don’t see any one else having treatment. My nurses are lovely. They are very experienced chemo nurses and always prepared to answer my questions but it isn’t quite the same.
On balance, I am glad I went private. I don’t think I could have handled waiting 10 weeks for treatment to start. Others will have had more positive experiences NHS care and obviously not everyone has private health cover.
Thanks for message which has given me food for thought. Hope all hoes well got you
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Just add a quick comment re “You see the head man at your appts.”
It is possible to ask to see the consultant at any NHS clinic which you attend. I have asked on several occasions, in different specialties (including oncology and breast surgery and others), at different hospitals and this has ALWAYS been facilitated. Sometimes I have had to sit in the waiting room a bit longer on the day, sometimes I’ve actually been seen earlier. PLEASE ASK.
Also, I have found with friends who have gone the private route it is very important to ensure that different specialities liaise properly and you may need to make phone calls and enquiries to ensure this is happening. As an example, a friend of mine had private surgery for bowel cancer in the June (weeks before me), he sat at home waiting to hear about the next step i.e. chemo. I had my breast surgery in the August, MDT had recommended chemo which started on the dot 6 weeks later. This prompted my friend to find out what had happened about his chemo - turned out it hadn’t even been discussed by the doctors, there was no MDT and no cross-referral to oncology had happened. Surprise surprise an appointment with the oncologist at the private hospital came through for 3 days after he rang to find out what was happening but the upshot was that he started chemo later than was ideal - who knows if that made a difference to the outcome?
I tell this story, not to try to discredit the private system (which has treated me well in the past for non-cancer conditions) but to stress that I think it’s wrong to assume it’s more efficient as regards multi-disciplinary working and admin-wise. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve chased up appointments, screening etc. on the NHS so I’m just saying that if you are the type of person who likes to ensure everything happens as it should, you may also need to exercise this degree of control under the private system too.
Everyone has different experiences of course but locally I got to know several women who were treated privately for breast cancer because I joined a support group which was originally set up at the local private hospital but also catered for NHS patients. I saw very few differences, they had carpets in their hospital rooms, I had an individual room with lino on the floor and en suite loo/shower at the NHS hospital (this was their protocol for mastectomy patients), we saw exactly the same consultants and had chemo and radiotherapy regimes appropriate to us. One difference was that private patients seem to get test results more quickly (this actually didn’t matter for me as my case was so obvious that I was told on the day of my first visit to the breast clinic that I had breast cancer and would need the full house of treatments). Also some people’s private medical insurance did give them access to some drugs e.g. denosumab (for secondary BC in bones) before it was widely available on the NHS.
Good luck to everyone making these decisions.