ADHD and Shared Care

In recent years, awareness of adult ADHD has grown significantly, leading to a rise in people seeking assessments. Due to high demand, waiting times for NHS ADHD assessments can be extremely long, sometimes up to five years.

As a result, many patients choose to pursue private assessments to obtain a diagnosis more quickly. While this can help expedite care, it’s important to understand how this decision affects access to NHS prescriptions and ongoing support.

What is Shared Care?

Shared care refers to an arrangement where an NHS specialist and a GP work together to manage a patient’s treatment. This often involves the specialist initiating treatment and the GP taking over aspects such as prescribing and monitoring, if they agree to do so.

• A GP is not contractually obligated to enter into a shared care agreement.
• Shared care is only appropriate if a specialist continues to be involved in the patient's treatment.
• The GP must be satisfied that it's safe, appropriate, and supported by necessary systems and oversight.
• Shared care must not result in a complete transfer of responsibility to the GP without specialist involvement.

Some private providers have presented these agreements as "shared care" while fully shifting the prescribing burden to the GP - without the necessary expert support or oversight.

Our Policy on Shared Care with Private Providers

Following guidance from the BMA and our LMC. The BMA advises that:

• Shared Care with private providers is not recommended due to the general NHS constitution principle of keeping as clear a separation as possible between private and NHS care. Shared Care is currently set up as an NHS service, and entering into a shared care arrangement may have implications around governance and quality assurance as well as promoting health inequalities. A private patient seeking access to shared care should therefore have their care completely transferred to the NHS. Shared care may be appropriate where private providers are providing commissioned NHS services and where appropriate shared care arrangements are in place.
• All shared care arrangements are voluntary, so even where agreements are in place, practices can decline shared care requests on clinical and capacity grounds. The responsibility for the patient’s care and ongoing prescribing then remains the responsibility of the private provider.

Patients currently receiving care from a private ADHD provider under an existing shared care agreement with CPGP prior to 1 May 2026 will not be affected immediately. However, from 1 May 2026 onwards, CPGP will no longer enter into any new shared care agreements with private providers.

We will contact affected patients and ask whether they wish to transfer their care to an NHS ADHD provider or remain under the care of their current private ADHD provider.

If you choose to remain with a private ADHD provider:

• We will terminate our Shared Care Agreement with your private provider.
• We will contact you and your provider to inform you that this is happening.
• We will issue you a 28-day prescription for your medication, after this prescription we will not be able to prescribe medication or provide monitoring under a shared care agreement
• All prescriptions and reviews must be managed by your private provider.
• Please consider the full cost of private care, including medications and regular specialist reviews.

ADHD medication should be reviewed annually by a specialist. If your private provider cannot ensure this, consider requesting a referral to NHS services. If you choose to transfer your care to an NHS provider, we can help facilitate this. Please complete our referral request form

New Shared Care Agreement requests

• We will not be accepting any shared care agreement requests from private ADHD providers.
• We will continue to offer ADHD shared care prescribing in partnership with NHS specialists, as long as appropriate monitoring and care is provided.