Why patients look beyond NHS cardiology waiting lists
For the next few minutes, we would like you to consider this one thought:
Every decision we make is a balance between pros and cons.
The most obvious example is making a purchase: the pros is – you get the product or service you want; the cons is – you part with some money.
A less obvious example is a decision where the popular saying ‘time is money’ fits well. That’s the decision where you evaluate what is more valuable to you: time or money.
Allow us to explain.
Assume that you have an option to use a service for free, but you have to wait to get it. Or you can choose to use the service today, but you will have to pay. Which option you go for depends, of course, on what you value more.
There are situations where money will be more important, but there will also be situations where time will matter a lot more to you than cash.
Health is an example of this. When it comes to improving our health or perhaps even curing an illness, many of us would opt in for the ‘fast track’ option.
Let’s look at heart health specifically. If you suspect there is something not quite right with your heart, you have two options in front of you. You can go through the NHS route – which is free, but takes as long as 18 weeks to see a cardiologist – or you can choose to ‘fast track’ the diagnosis with a private health check service outside of the NHS for a fee.
The demand for cardiology appointments in the UK currently is high, and whilst the NHS does an incredible job, they are overwhelmed with this demand, which for us patients means we have to wait, and 18 weeks – a whole season of summer – is quite some time.
During those 18 weeks, there is one thing that is almost certain: the symptoms won’t stop — instead, they are more likely to increase. When it comes to our heart, dealing with a problem whilst it’s small is much better than addressing it later, when the options become limited.
This is one of the main reasons why people choose services outside of the NHS to bypass the NHS cardiology waiting list. They recognise the benefit of diagnosing the problem early, so more treatment options are available, and the likelihood of a positive prognosis is higher.
This doesn’t mean that they choose not to use the NHS service at all (though that’s an option too). They can simply use those 18 weeks to gather evidence and information about their heart that the cardiologist they will eventually see can use to decide on a quicker course of action.
But before we go into the nitty-gritty of this, let’s briefly look at the free option — going the NHS route.
NHS option first: what you’re entitled to
The NHS offers a free Health Check of the cardiovascular system for anyone aged 40 – 74, unless you have any pre-existing conditions (full list on their website). If you’re eligible, you will be invited for the check every 5 years (here is the time trade-off again). The check focuses on your blood pressure and cholesterol, and you will have a conversation about your lifestyle (alcohol consumption, exercise, and so on). The result of this check is a risk score and any lifestyle advice to help you lower it if the score is high.
Keep in mind that this check focuses only on determining your risk of heart disease. If you have any symptoms you’d like to discuss, you will be advised to contact your GP…
Of course, if you have any ‘red-flag’ symptoms like ongoing chest pains or severe breathlessness, you would be directed to urgent assessment.
What is a self-pay health check (and how is it different)?
If you read the above section and thought, ‘a lot can happen in 5 years…’ or ‘well, if I have symptoms I’m back to square one of contacting GP’, then we agree on both fronts.
The good news is, you have other options. These days there are several heart health check services available that you can access without referral, AND you can request them to assess your risk (similar to the NHS Health Check) or to evaluate any symptoms you might have noticed.
The best way to start is to complete a few simple tests to get a baseline picture of your heart’s health. This includes checking your blood biomarkers, resting pulse, blood pressure, and heart rhythm. We cover this and which devices are best for these checks in more detail in a separate article you can access by clicking here.
Remember, you don’t need a referral or a note from your GP to use these tests. It also doesn’t mean that you can’t use the NHS alongside it. You can absolutely do both, and we will explain how in the following sections.
When a self‑pay heart check makes sense
There are two main reasons why you might want to consider the self-pay heart check. (Okay, there might be more, but these two we feel are the most common.)
The first one is when you have symptoms that are significant enough to play on your mind, but your GP advised you to ‘keep an eye on it’. You trust the opinion of your GP that your symptoms are still mild, but you’ve noticed the anxiety creeping in, plus you are of the opinion that it’s better to be ‘safe than sorry’. You also know that anything caught early is usually much easier to treat or address simply (no life-altering procedures are likely).
Many people, including some of our customers, are in this group. They take their health seriously and prefer a proactive, preventative approach to their health and wellbeing. It’s not necessarily that they don’t agree with their GP; they just want to make sure that they are not missing anything.
In this scenario, people order private heart health checks, ‘just to be sure’ that everything is okay, or to better understand the significance and nature of the symptoms they are experiencing. The biggest driver for using the self-pay service here is the desire not to be stuck in that loop of ‘it might be nothing, but it might be something’. Plus, you are collecting information that will help your GP decide whether it’s worth referring you for further tests or a consultation with a cardiologist.
The second reason to use a self-pay heart check is when your GP agrees it’s best to have your heart checked by a cardiologist and refers you for a cardiology appointment, but you are stuck on an unfortunate 18-week waiting list. Since you don’t want to sit on your hands and just wait, you get to work and collect as much valuable information as you can to help you decide whether you should insist on having your appointment brought forward or whether 18 weeks is totally fine to wait.
What you are effectively doing here is homework. Collecting heaps of useful information that you can then take to your appointment to have a more productive conversation about your individual case to not only help your doctor figure out what might potentially be wrong – if anything – but also what treatment or further test might be beneficial for you specifically.
Plugging results back into the NHS
Having self-pay tests done whilst you wait for your cardiology appointment is not against the rules. You’re being proactive about your health, and doctors are not the type of people to dismiss information that will help them better understand your individual circumstances.
They might, however, question the validity or quality of the data. You can’t blame them, really. They understand the importance of health and the seriousness of consequences if they don’t get things right.
For the self-pay health checks to be productive and actually provide your doctor with valuable information, you need to order tests that are performed with high-standard equipment and following high-standard procedures, as those in the NHS. There is no point ordering tests that are not accurate enough to tell your doctor anything for certain.
The best way to help them with that, and to avoid the scrutiny of questions such as, ‘where did you get these results from?’, ‘What exactly did they do?’, etc., is to use an accredited service provider. Accreditations tell your doctor everything they need to know about the quality of the analysis and its reliability.
Look for tests with CQC accreditation. Also, look for any of these on the box: FDA-approved, CE-approved, or NHS-approved. All of these mean you can be confident the test wasn’t a waste of time or money, and you will not need to convince your doctor to look at it.
If you’ve ordered tests from an accredited provider, they will (or at least should) send you a summary report with an interpretation of your results and offer you a consultation call to give you an opportunity to ask any questions relating to your results — at least this is something we offer all our customers at Your Heart Check, along with our suggestion of next steps.
The accredited provider should also include detailed medical outputs and numbers that might be too tricky for you to decode, but are certainly clear for your doctor to understand. Take these to your appointment as well.
You can repeat this process as many times as you need. You go to your appointment with the NHS cardiologist, show them the results from your self-pay test, have a conversation with them and decide the next steps. Book another appointment with them, and while you wait, do more self-pay tests to make that next appointment more productive.
You can do this as many times as you feel helps you stay in control of your health.
You know your heart best. You know your symptoms best. And you understand the complexities of your lifestyle that influence your health best too. There is no clear-cut way to say when to use self-pay, private check and when to wait it out with the NHS. It comes down to a balance between the time and cost of private tests. Only you know which side is more significant in your case and when.
In the UK, the waiting time for a cardiology appointment can be as long as 18 weeks, but it doesn’t mean that you have to spend these 18 weeks just waiting — though you absolutely can. Whatever you decide is okay with us.
FAQs
Yes, sometimes. If your self-pay heart health check gives you clear evidence that something is wrong, you can use these results to convince your GP to expedite your referral. That being said, doing self-pay health check doesn’t guarantee jumping ahead of higher‑risk NHS patients.
NHS care (including emergency care) remains available to you, but you still have to follow the NHS care pathways to receive treatment. This means that if your self-pay tests find a problem, you still have to take them to your GP to receive a referral for further tests. You can only self-refer to the NHS specialists if that option already exists.
Yes, eligibility remains; NHS Health Checks are based on age and risk, not private choices.
We believe that if you bring results that your GP can be confident in, they are likely to find them valuable. This is why we recommend using accredited services only.
