Comment by vidarh

It's very much more about speed. Waiting lists varies greatly - I just took my son to the GP this morning, after we booked last week. The only reason it wasn't sooner was that they wanted blood test results first. He had blood tests booked in the morning after we booked, and we were seen ahead of time - the appointment took 5 minutes. There was zero wait when we checked in at the GP.

New Years Eve, my son was referred to an out-of-hours GP service within an hour of a phone consultation.

But while the shortest wait I've had for a video consultation for myself (via the NHS) was literally 10 minutes, the longest was two weeks.

If you have an emergency, you will be triaged and given a faster appointment if you use the right channels (111 - the non-emergency alterantive to 999/911, or urgent care walkin centres, or A&E as the last resort), but of course many things that are not an emergency will seem intolerable to wait for, and then it absolutely sucks if you can't afford to pay your way to be seen faster.

This is a political/cost issue - the NHS is bargain basement in terms of amount spent per patient compared to many other countries.

A large proportion of doctors in the private sector also works for the NHS, so quality of clinical experience has never been a concern to me.

E.g. when my ex looked for a doctor when she considered having a c-section done private, the top expert she could find was an NHS consultant that worked privately on the side. This is the widespread, and often the private clinics are operated by NHS trusts, as a means to supplement their budgets, and/or the operating rooms etc. are rented from NHS trusts.

If anything, my only negative experiene with lack of experience here has been with private providers (the only nurse that has ever struggled to draw blood from me in my entire life failed to get any blood from me after 3 agonisingly slow attempts where she rooted around in my arm for a vein. Every NHS nurse that has drawn blood from me or my son have been so fast at drawing blood you hardly notice before they're done even when they're filling multiple containers)

But if you want to be pampered, then private providers will be nicer. They're also nicer if you e.g. want more time - GP's are expected to allocate an average of something like 7 minutes per appointment for the NHS patients, for example, and how flexible they will be varies, while with a private GP you can pay for however long appointments you want.