This website is provided as a resource for patients, the public and healthcare professionals. It provides information about our hospitals, our staff and our services.  We aim for high standards of accessibility – read more on our accessibility page. Our position on various legal issues relating to this site, including cookies, is laid out below.

Disclaimer

The Royal Brompton & Harefield NHS Hospitals website is designed to provide information and education about heart and lung disease to healthcare professionals, patients and the public.

The Hospitals unable to offer medical advice or professional services through this site. Referrals for expert opinion or treatment for heart or lung disease are made only by registered medical practitioners, and not by patients themselves.

Every effort has been made to ensure that the information provided on this website is accurate. However, neither Royal Brompton & Harefield NHS Hospitals, our partners, nor the authors or maintenance staff for this website, can accept any responsibility whatsoever for any consequence of inaccuracy, howsoever caused.

The information provided here is not intended as a substitute for professional medical care, does not constitute business, medical or other professional advice, and is subject to change. If you have, or suspect that you may have, heart or lung disease, you are strongly advised to consult your own General Practitioner without delay.

Royal Brompton & Harefield NHS Hospitals are not responsible for the content or reliability of the linked websites and does not necessarily endorse the views expressed within them. No guarantee is offered in relation to the availability or operation of linked pages. A link does not imply an endorsement of a site; likewise, not linking to a particular site does not imply lack of endorsement.  Read more on our links policy.

Royal Brompton & Harefield NHS Hospitals cannot guarantee uninterrupted access to this website, and accepts no responsibility for any damages arising from the loss of use of this information.


Copyright

Content on this website is the copyright of Royal Brompton & Harefield NHS Hospitals unless otherwise stated. Where copyright applies, visitors may download material for private research, study or in-house use only. Visitors must not copy, distribute, or publish any material from this website. Any other use of copyright material requires the formal permission of Royal Brompton & Harefield NHS Hospitals.  Email the web editor with any requests.


Feedback

You are very welcome to provide feedback about this site, such as advising us of broken links, out of date or inaccurate information and to make suggestions.

Any feedback to the site will be treated in the strictest confidence.

This privacy statement discloses the privacy practice for www.rbhh-specialistcare.co.uk


Our use of social media channels

The social media channels for Royal Brompton & Harefield Hospitals Specialist Care and Guy’s and St Thomas’ Private Care (part of Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust) are managed by our marketing team.

If you follow our social media channels, you can expect to receive messages covering news, events, service updates, official announcements and promotional content about our private patient services. We will also republish information that we feel is appropriate, relevant and interesting.

We reserve all rights to the following social media accounts:

Replies and messages

We welcome feedback from followers and read all messages. However, we will not always be able to reply individually to everyone.

If you send a message to our social media account, this will not be considered as contacting us officially. If you have a formal comment about our services, please contact our team.

Who we follow

We follow individuals and organisations where appropriate and will stop following accounts that we believe are malicious or spam.

If we follow an individual on our social media channels, this does not imply endorsement of any kind.

Availability

We will normally update and monitor our social media accounts only during office hours. We cannot guarantee that all our channels will always be available and cannot accept responsibility if there is a lack of service.

Social media community rules

We are committed to diversity and inclusion at our hospitals to ensure that our private healthcare services are fair, accessible and appropriate for all our patients.

This commitment is reflected in our social media communications and we expect that followers of our social media accounts and/or those commenting on our social media posts respect that too.

We welcome comments on our social media accounts and posts that are intelligent, constructive, and related to our services.

We encourage everyone interacting on our social media accounts and posts to treat others how they wish to be treated.

We will do our best to help users with any queries within their comments, but to respect user privacy and to prevent personal details being shared publicly, we may ask them to contact us via private or direct message on the social media platform being used. We will also remove or hide comments that identify users offline.

Any comments that do not meet our community rules will be removed or hidden and the user’s comment may be reported to the relevant social media platform for assessment.

The following comments are not permitted on our social media accounts or posts and go against our community rules:

  • Abusive language, aggression, discrimination, and bullying (whether that is aimed at other users or our staff and hospitals).
  • Distressing content.
  • Duplicate posts (spam) from the same user or group.
  • Any comments subject to legal issues, such as those related to slander, contempt of court, defamation or publicising/encouraging/endorsing illegal activity.
  • Comments containing unverified or false claims about products, health conditions and/or their diagnosis and treatment of health conditions.  
  • Comments with overt political or religious bias intended to incite others.
  • Aggressive lobbying that disrupts the community for other users.
  • The impersonation of brands or other users or featuring licensed or copyright material.

Finally, we retain the right to remove content posted on social media or block users from posting to any of our social media pages for any other reason deemed necessary to create a helpful community.


Links policy

The Hospitals are not responsible for the content or reliability of linked websites and does not endorse any views expressed within them.  The content and availability of external sites will change over time.  Please contact us if you encounter any broken links or material you feel inappropriate on a linked site.

We aim to deliver links that allow access to additional information, background material or, if appropriate, informed comment.

The content of other sites is beyond our editorial control and may change over time.  This means before linking to any site we check the content of the site thoroughly and carry out further checks after the link is established.

We never include a link in return for cash, services or any other consideration in kind.  In accordance with NHS guidelines we do not link to commercial sites, unless working with a commercial partner.

Links are made available on relevant pages rather than a dedicated links page, in accordance with NHS guidelines.


How we support our clinicians

To ensure our referring clinicians are able to treat patients at Royal Brompton & Harefield Hospitals Specialist Care (RB&HH), we provide the following services to them.

Higher value services

Consulting rooms are available for private outpatient appointments at each of our sites: Royal Brompton Hospital, Harefield Hospital and 77 Wimpole Street. We charge clinicians the following fees at market rates:

  • £14 per patient appointment, for the first four patients seen on one day
    or:
  • if five or more patient appointments take place on one day, then we charge a set fee of £70 per day.

To ensure a smooth journey for both patients and clinicians, the following services are provided, for which we do not charge the clinicians:

  • outpatient reception assistance, for example welcoming patients and directing them to the appropriate consulting room
  • inpatient administration assistance, for example arranging consultants to visit patients while they are on the ward.

Secretarial services are not provided for clinicians. Rather, it is the clinician’s responsibility to employ their own secretary, if required.

Low value services

We do not charge clinicians for low value services.

Referring clinicians, like other staff in the private patient unit, have access to regular workplace amenities, including:

  • tea, coffee and water
  • stationary
  • car parking.

In order to communicate to patients and referrers about the range of expert specialists available at RB&HH, clinicians are profiled or featured in marketing materials. This may include:

  • our printed consultant directory
  • printed marketing materials like leaflets or adverts
  • our website and social media channels
  • our magazines Case Notes and Healthwise
  • general promotion, including through third party channels.

We may take photographs of the clinician for use in the above communications and materials, and share them with the clinician for their own use.

Corporate hospitality

We may occasionally invite clinicians to attend seminar events, as a guest or a speaker. These events give clinicians an opportunity to share their specialist expertise and communicate the procedures or treatments that they offer, face-to-face with interested third parties such as referrers and embassy contacts. Events such as these are organised and/or hosted by the marketing and business development team at RB&HH, and clinicians are not charged to attend.

Events usually take place on our premises at Royal Brompton Hospital, Harefield Hospital or 77 Wimpole Street. Occasionally, events may take place at a nearby restaurant or other facility, depending on the room booking availability or the requirements of the event.

Due to the time of day when events take place, if the event crosses a mealtime then food and drinks may be provided for attendees. At events not crossing a mealtime then tea, coffee and light refreshments are usually provided.

At RB&HH we do not organise conferences or annual dinners solely for our clinicians.

Financial interest

As a private patient unit at an NHS hospital, there are no clinicians practising at RB&HH who have a share or financial interest in the hospital, the facilities or the equipment used.

Payments to part-time clinicians

All consultants who treat patients privately at RB&HH are self-employed for this purpose; they are not part-time employees. Therefore, no payments are made to referring clinicians holding a part-time position at RB&HH.