We currently have 12 departments at OneWelbeck, including the largest teams of their kind in the UK for our digestive health and heart health departments. Additionally, we have teams for women's health, which covers both gynaecology and enhanced breast screening, imaging & diagnostics, orthopaedics, and ear, nose and throat (ENT). We have built a lung health team, which is now the largest private respiratory group in the UK and has been crucial in the treatment of Long Covid, along with an endocrinology team that has 14 endocrinologists.
As a result, when a patient walks into one of our clinics, they are immediately seen by the appropriate clinician, which is exciting because healthcare in London has not traditionally been organised in this way.
The difference in our model is that we have excellent doctors who wanted to affect change in the system by leading their own clinics. They had, to an extent, become frustrated with the traditional way that hospitals operate and wanted to build a better type of healthcare. That meant these leading doctors forming teams of their highly regarded colleagues and building a clinic that focused on their specialty.
OneWelbeck is now the largest doctor partnership in the UK, and our model is so successful because every doctor in each department is recruited directly by the other medics in that team, who are all partners and invested in the business. The fact that every member of our medical staff has been selected by the other doctors on their teams gives our patients great peace of mind, knowing they will receive consistently high-quality care.
There is a great sense of pride within the hospital, as well as an enormous amount of experience, because so many of our clinicians have had leadership roles within the National Health Service (NHS) and they also have exceptional academic credentials. Being invested in OneWelbeck gives many of these highly established specialists the chance to consolidate decades of experience. They can develop the very best practice within their clinics, as they know what works and what doesn’t.
Some of our teams at OneWelbeck have as many as 40 doctors. That means we cover all the subspecialties, and our doctors will happily refer patients to their colleagues in other departments where they could also help, rather than sending them elsewhere and causing delays to diagnosis and treatment.
As each doctor has a strong personal connection to OneWelbeck, they are invested in its success and committed to the convenience and comfort of their patients. Our senior clinicians recruit staff that they are confident are the best in their specialties, ensuring an exceptional quality of patient care. The doctors at OneWelbeck spend a lot of time trying to find new ways to support and inform their patients too. For instance, most of our clinical specialties now have an integrated app with over 300 personalised videos of different procedures, which patients can watch before coming into our building. This simply wouldn’t be possible in places where the specialists often change.
Then, of course, there is the fact that our specialist teams are located across nine floors of the same building, which makes it one of the most accessible centres for private healthcare. Usually, these services would be more fragmented and spread across multiple sites.
We are fortunate to have an incredibly modern building, and hygiene has obviously been a priority. The hospital has its own air plant, so we have been running up to 15 air changes an hour, exceeding regulations, and this is something we will continue to do. We have also embraced numerous technological advances because of the pandemic, such as using dual-energy CT scans that enable us to provide a more detailed picture of lung damage.
The most significant development during the lockdown stages of the pandemic was the increase in online consultations, which have proved successful and have remained in place. Video conferencing enables us to offer initial consultations a lot sooner, as well as to provide aftercare where required, and also gives our international patients a greater degree of flexibility. For example, if you live in the Middle East, you can book an initial online consultation without having to travel.
Our aim is to be the highest-quality, most renowned clinic in the UK, and we will achieve that by continuing to expand. We will soon be opening a new hospital in Oxford, one of the world’s leading centres for academic health science. We’re very excited about the expertise that will bring to our network.
Our specialist teams work incredibly well, and I think we really have discovered a winning formula. Our ethos is simple – get the best doctors and allow them to develop outstanding clinics.
We are also very committed to implementing the latest medical breakthroughs, so our role as a leading private hospital is to turn academic research into new clinical techniques, which can pioneer throughout the private sector and the NHS. We have been busy building up academic partnerships and collaborations to ensure that we can give our patients the very best new treatments – not just in London, but the world.
To learn more about OneWelbeck and how to refer patients, please call +44 (0)20 3653 2000 or visit onewelbeck.com
