Practice Policies

Practice Policy on prescribing private ADHD medications

As a practice we no longer prescribe ADHD medications for patients based on requests from private ADHD assessments.

We appreciate that this decision will be frustrating for patients who have paid for a private assessment, most likely in an attempt to speed up access to treatment.

There is currently no formal shared care agreement with either secondary care or private providers for prescribing and monitoring these medications. These are strong medications which can have serious side effects, require ongoing monitoring and are usually initiated by a Consultant Psychiatrist. Recently there has been some concern around the quality of some of the private assessments and ultimately the diagnoses of ADHD being made in the private sector.

As GPs we ultimately take the legal responsibility for prescribing in such situations and we therefore need to be confident that both the ADHD assessment is robust and the diagnosis is correct. It is important to note that as GPs we are not able to make this decision as regards these private assessments as we do not have the necessary skills and training in the diagnosis of ADHD. In these circumstances, there is no obligation on GPs to prescribe ADHD medication.

Following discussions with both our local NHS Adult and Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS), we now pass all such private ADHD assessments and prescribing requests onto our NHS colleagues so that they can review the assessment as regards its validity and whether or not medication is required before we will commence prescribing for this group of patients.

We acknowledge that this may delay some patients accessing medication, but ultimately this decision is to ensure patient safety.

Page last reviewed: 10 July 2025
Page created: 20 July 2022