How going private actually works in Scotland

In Scotland, generally not. The hospitals priced on this site — Ross Hall in Glasgow, Albyn in Aberdeen, Kings Park in Stirling, Spire in Edinburgh and Nuffield Health in Glasgow — are separate private hospitals in their own buildings.

What overlaps is the staff, not the premises.

Often, yes. The Scottish Parliament’s research service notes that the ability to do some private work has always been part of the NHS consultant contract. So the consultant who would eventually treat you on the NHS may well be the one who treats you privately, in a different building, sooner.

This is the strongest argument against going private, and it deserves a straight answer rather than a defensive one.

The case is simple: there is a finite number of consultants and a finite number of operating hours. Time spent on a private list is not spent on an NHS one. If the thing actually limiting NHS throughput is staff capacity rather than demand, then private work competes directly with it.

We can’t settle that with the data on this site, and we don’t try to. This site takes no position on whether anyone should go private — there is no recommended option, no “best value” badge, and the NHS side is shown with exactly the same weight as the private side.

Ask your health board before you commit to anything, and get the answer in writing.

A private consultation or scan is a different thing from private treatment, and they aren’t necessarily treated the same way. Several people have described paying privately for diagnostics, taking the results back to the NHS, and continuing on the NHS pathway from there.

We looked for clear published NHS Scotland guidance on this and couldn’t find any that covers it properly. Rather than guess, we’d rather tell you it’s a question for your board. If you find an authoritative source, please tell us and we’ll link it here.

This is the cost nobody puts on a price list, and it can be significant.

The Scottish Government’s stated position — set out in relation to treatment bought abroad — is that routine pre- and post-operative care should be part of the package the patient buys, and that NHS boards are under no obligation to provide it. Emergency care is always provided. Your GP will still use their own clinical judgement if you turn up with a complication.

In practice this varies, and the published prices on this site cover the standard follow-up the hospital itself includes — not whatever happens if something goes wrong months later. Worth asking the hospital directly what their package covers if a complication arises.

No — that’s an England-only policy. Patients in England can ask to be referred to a different provider with a shorter wait. There is no equivalent right in Scotland, which is why UK-wide sites offering it aren’t much use here.

It is still worth asking your GP where you would actually be referred, particularly in a smaller board — some send patients to a neighbouring board for certain specialties rather than running their own list.

Possibly, and it seems to be what a lot of people actually do. A private consultation and a scan costs a few hundred pounds rather than several thousand, and it answers the question of how serious the problem is — which is often the thing that determines how long you’ll wait on the NHS.

This site currently prices whole operations, not diagnostics. That is a gap, and we know about it.