\n<\/p>\n
W<\/span>hen Craig, not his real name, started as a clinician for a private ADHD (attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder) clinic in the spring of 2023, he was pleased by how thorough the training was and how seriously the organisation seemed to take clinical standards.<\/p>\n \u201cThe training and clinical supervision there were the best I\u2019ve ever experienced in any organisation,\u201d he said. \u201cThey truly invested in developing their staff \u2026 a consultant paediatrician would often sit in on assessments to observe and provide detailed feedback.\u201d<\/p>\n But issues at the company emerged over time: the workload was massive and the quality of the clinical work did not seem to carry through into the reports sent to patients and GPs, which were often done by administrative staff to save time. \u201cOver the 13 months I was there, I never actually saw a single report that appeared to have been written by me, even though they were sent out under my name,\u201d he says. \u201cI believe that was the core issue.\u201d<\/p>\n Other clinicians, working across different providers, describe the same disconnect. Alice, whose name has been changed, worked for a clinic from 2023 to 2024, and recalls annotating PDFs only to see them turned into highly templated letters. \u201cThey didn\u2019t always feel personal or fully reflective of my input,\u201d she said. The assessments were detailed; the documentation often wasn\u2019t.<\/p>\n She said: \u201cDiagnoses were only made when there was clear evidence of symptoms being current and pervasive since childhood. <\/strong>We were not pressured to diagnose but once you took a patient on, you had them until they were stable, which means the case load could grow quite big.\u201d<\/p>\n Craig said he had dealt with \u201ceasily 20 patients \u2026 and an additional 30 prescription requests\u201d on top of reviews and admin. He was contracted for eight hours but routinely worked double that. \u201cI remember sitting at my desk in tears, physically and emotionally exhausted, knowing I simply couldn\u2019t do it all.\u201d He described it as \u201cchaotic and unsustainable\u201d.<\/p>\n Brian, another clinician using a different name, who left a clinic this year, recalled colleagues working from dawn to evening. \u201cYou could see patients from 6am to 8pm. Some people did. Potentially you could squeeze in eight new assessments a day.\u201d<\/p>\n Administrative systems struggled under the volume: calls went unanswered, emails piled up and prescription requests stalled. \u201cAccess was extremely poor,\u201d Alice said. \u201cCalls and emails weren\u2019t always answered promptly, leaving patients upset.\u201d<\/p>\n Some clinicians resorted to delivering vital medication to patients themselves when delays became unsafe. Craig said: \u201cThe back-office systems often failed us \u2013 prescriptions could be hard to obtain or delayed, and administrative staff were stretched too thin. Sometimes patients would call on the day saying they\u2019d run out of medication. On several occasions, I even hand-delivered prescriptions to patients myself, and other clinicians did the same.\u201d<\/p>\n The strain became most visible when patients tried to move from private treatment into NHS shared care. Clinicians recalled promises that the transition would be smooth, followed by weeks or months of delays. \u201cGPs would take ages to reply, often only to say they wouldn\u2019t take the patient on \u2026 Meanwhile, the patient needed medication and I was asked to write prescriptions for people I\u2019d never met,\u201d Alice told the Guardian.<\/p>\n Craig said: \u201cParents would ring up saying the medication wasn\u2019t working and I\u2019d realise they\u2019d never been reviewed.\u201d<\/p>\n NHS clinicians who handle incoming referrals see the broader consequences. \u201cAround 70\u201380% of private assessments do not meet the required standards,\u201d one clinician said. \u201cPeople think they\u2019re getting an NHS-equivalent assessment, but they\u2019re not.\u201d The result is a wave of complaints from people who thought they had completed the process. \u201cPeople have paid money, waited months, and then have to go back on the NHS waiting list,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Yet none of the clinicians working for private companies described bad intentions from frontline staff. \u201cMost patients have a good experience by and large,\u201d Brian said. \u201cSome people got lost in the system \u2026 they [clinicians] were trying to cope with a massive increase in workload.\u201d<\/p>\n Staff talked of desperation, families borrowing money, using savings or waiting years for NHS assessments. \u201cPeople who self-fund aren\u2019t buying a diagnosis, they\u2019re buying an assessment process,\u201d Craig said. \u201cOften they\u2019re desperate.\u201d<\/p>\n The picture is the same across all accounts, the Guardian has heard: a sector overwhelmed by demand, expanding faster than its administrative and clinical structures can safely support. \u201cWe\u2019re waiting to see what the ADHD taskforce is going to do,\u201d Brian says. \u201cRight now, there aren\u2019t enough resources to fix the problem.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When Craig, not his real name, started as a clinician for a private ADHD (attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder) clinic in the spring of 2023, he was pleased by how thorough the training was and how seriously the organisation seemed to take clinical standards. \u201cThe training and clinical supervision there were the best I\u2019ve ever experienced in<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":41500,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[3073,1865,3284,22097,3076,6525,3078,311,3077,364,392],"class_list":{"0":"post-41499","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-adhd","9":"tag-attention","10":"tag-chaos","11":"tag-clinicians","12":"tag-deficit","13":"tag-desperate","14":"tag-disorder","15":"tag-england","16":"tag-hyperactivity","17":"tag-people","18":"tag-system"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41499","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=41499"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41499\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/41500"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}