You are permitted to mix NHS and private care. They are expected to share test results with each other so that test procedures don't need to be repeated unnecessarily. NHS will not usually provide prescriptions for private care. Sometimes you can transfer your private care over to the NHS if the NHS offers the same.
Some clinicians who do both won't do both with the same patient at the same time, so if you are having a mixture, it may have to be with different clinicians.
NHS clinicians are not permitted to bring up private treatments in an NHS consultation unless you specifically ask them first. So if you are interested in private treatments, do tell your NHS clinician so that they can talk about any possibilities.
One example I have come across a number of times in prostate cancer care is where a patient goes and buys a private PSMA PET scan because they can't get one on the NHS. This doesn't always work, because if you take a private PSMA PET scan result to a clinician in a hospital which doesn't do PSMA PET scans, they might not have any experience of interpreting them. This was highlighted to me by one of the scanner centres which does NHS and private scans - their comment was if you are at a stage of treatment where PSMA PET scans are likely beneficial (which would include probably all cases of recurrence), make sure you're being treated by a hospital which routinely does them and is therefore familiar with how to interpret them.
Edited by member 12 May 2026 at 10:29
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