1. What these terms and conditions cover
These terms and conditions contain essential legal information that tells you things like:
- The rules for using our services
- What we need from you to provide our services
- What to do if something goes wrong
These terms and conditions are an agreement between you and us (GP at Hand/we/us). This is so you know the rules and your rights when you use our services, websites (www.gpathand.nhs.uk) and services provided by Babylon Healthcare Services (trading as eMed) on our behalf.
By using our services you agree to these terms and conditions. If you don’t follow these terms and conditions, we might need to cancel or suspend your account.
You should also read these terms and conditions along with:
2. Contacts
How to contact us
You can contact us using the details at the bottom of this page.
How we contact you
We will contact you in English by SMS, through the NHS App, by email or by phone. Please contact our support team if you need a translator or interpreter.
3. What we mean by our services
Our services fall into 2 categories:
(a) Clinical services
Our video and audio consultations, where you can talk with one of our medical professionals. This includes people like doctors, advanced nurse practitioners, phlebotomists (people qualified to draw blood), physiotherapists, pharmacists, and mental health therapists. Throughout these terms and conditions, we’ve called them practitioners.
These practitioners might give you a diagnosis, recommendation, or treatment. They may also prescribe to you, or refer you to someone else.
(b) Digital healthcare services
Services that give you health and lifestyle information through our apps or websites.
Our digital healthcare services are for information only. They are not designed to diagnose or provide medical advice or treatment. They should never be used as a replacement for a qualified medical professional.
Our services
You can access our services in different ways.
- Our NHS primary care service is available to patients who register with GP at Hand as their NHS GP practice
4. Important information about our digital healthcare services
Our digital healthcare services are for information only. They are not designed to diagnose you or provide you with medical advice or treatment. They should never be used as a replacement for a qualified medical professional.
They are there to give you information relating to your general wellness or health, and to let you know about general causes, risks and/or possible next steps. They’re not designed to be used instead of a healthcare professional.
Don’t use any of these digital healthcare services in an emergency. Instead, call 999 or the emergency services immediately.
You should always talk to a qualified healthcare professional if you have questions about your health or a medical condition. And before you make any decisions about your health.
Depending on how you access them, you might not be able to get our full list of services.
We’ll let you know about restrictions on the intended use of our services in these terms and conditions or on our app or websites, but additional rules or restrictions may apply from time to time.
5. What we need from you
We need to receive some personal information from or about you (such as your name, contact details and information about your health) so that we can give you the best version of our services. To find out more about how we use this information and how we protect your privacy, see our privacy policy.
The information you give us, whether through our clinical services or our digital health services, must be accurate and in English. We need you to let us know if any of the information we hold about you is wrong or out of date. Please contact our support team if you need a translator or interpreter..
When booking an appointment, you may choose to upload a photo if there’s something you want to show your practitioner. Do not upload any photos of an intimate area of any adult’s or child’s body (such as genitals, anus, bottom or breasts). Do your best to describe the issue in writing. You can then discuss it with your practitioner in more detail during your consultation.
6. Our clinical services
Our practitioners are based in the UK. They’re members of the appropriate regulatory body (for example, our doctors are members of the General Medical Council). They’re committed to clinical best practice and any related standards.
Our practitioners might have different opinions on some medical conditions or symptoms. This doesn’t mean that our clinical services are at fault; it’s normal for experts to have different views from time to time.
There are some medical conditions that we won’t be able to help you with in a video or phone consultation. We may also decide that we are not able to help you via video or phone if your medical history is too complex for remote assessment and management. In these instances we will require you to attend an appointment at one of our in-person Clinics.
Your consultation
We’ll try to offer you a range of options for the time and date of your consultation, but we can’t promise to offer consultations in a specific timeframe, or that a specific practitioner will be available at a particular time.
Make sure that you are in a suitable place when attending your consultation. More guidance on this is available in our FAQs. If you are not in a suitable place, the practitioner may ask you to move, or end your consultation and ask you to book another appointment.
We may record the audio of your consultation to make sure we’re giving you the best service we can. To find out more about how we use this information and how we protect your privacy, see our privacy policy.
If you don’t think you’ve been able to clearly share your medical needs during a consultation, you should speak to a practitioner in person. If you’re worried about any advice you’ve received, then you should book another appointment to discuss this.
You should contact emergency services or arrange follow-on care if one of our practitioners recommends it.
Your location
You must let your practitioner know at the start of your consultation if you are not located in the UK. The NHS is not responsible for your medical care outside the UK. You should check your medical care entitlements and options before you travel outside the UK.
7. Your prescriptions and medicines
Our practitioners follow national evidence-based guidance, such as the National Institute of Clinical Excellence (NICE). They meet Care Quality Commission (CQC) standards.
Read more on the National Institute of Clinical Excellence website.
And also on the Care Quality Commission website.
We will send any prescription to your choice of pharmacy who will then provide your medicine. These aren’t part of GP at Hand and we can’t take responsibility for their acts or mistakes.
We may refuse to prescribe to you if we think it’s not safe or legal to do so.
8. What we need if you use our clinical services
You must:
- Follow any instructions our practitioners give to you
- Follow any instructions we give to you about how to use medicines or healthcare products we recommend or prescribe. This includes use-by dates
- Keep any medicines we prescribe secure and don’t allow anyone other than the patient named on the prescription to use them
- Only use our services for you, unless you’re seeking advice for a child of whom you’re the parent or legal guardian
- Tell a practitioner or your GP if you have any bad or unexpected effects from anything we’ve recommended to you
- Contact emergency services if you think it’s necessary.
Before you book your first digital appointment, you must follow tour instructions to verify your identity. If you do not verify your identity, then your appointment may not go ahead.
We don’t tolerate any abusive, aggressive or offensive behaviour directed towards any Babylon employees or practitioners. If we think that this is happening, then we may end your consultation and/or take any other appropriate action (including, if applicable, reporting the incident to the police or asking the NHS to deregister you from our practice).
9. Prices and how to pay for private services
Our NHS services are free and available to all registered patients. Some services are not covered by the NHS, and we reserve the right to charge a fee for these. We will always let you know if a service has a fee, and you can choose not to use this service if you wish. Our prices may change at any time, but this will not affect the price of anything you have already requested. All prices exclude VAT, where this applies
10. Children and young people
Make sure that you supervise your children when they use our clinical services.
You can apply for proxy access to add children under 16 to your online account as long as you are their parent or legal guardian.
You should either use the services on their behalf (for example, if using a digital healthcare service that is age-restricted) or supervise their use of the services at all times.
11. What you can’t do with our services
When using our services, you must not use them:
- For commercial purposes, like using them on your own website for profit
- For any improper, illegitimate or unlawful purpose, like interfering with or reverse engineering our app or website
- In any way that could damage, disable or impair the operation or security of our services, like installing any virus, malware or harmful material, or making use of our services other than for the intended purpose
- To gain access (or try to gain access) to any user accounts, data (including patient data) or computer systems or networks, through any method
If you do, we may suspend your access to our digital services and take additional action including contacting the police and / or asking the NHS to deregister you from our services.
We use anti-virus measures on our website. But we can’t promise that our services will always be virus-free.
12. If something goes wrong
Please contact us if something goes wrong. We’ll do our best to fix the problem.
We provide our services as they’re described and we don’t make any other guarantees.
If we break these terms we will only be responsible for any losses that could have been foreseen when we entered into the terms.
Some of the things we can’t be held responsible for include:
- Loss or damage as a result of not following the instructions for using our services or using any of our services for anything other than their intended use
- Business losses to you (our services are for personal use only)
- Any loss or damage as a result of your own breach of these terms or our privacy policy
- Loss or damage from using other websites we link to from our website, including any retail partners we might work with or invite you to access. GP at Hand doesn’t recommend or endorse any websites or products that we link to. You must make your own decision about whether you want to access or use these.
Unless the law says otherwise, we will not award compensation for any amount higher than what you have paid us.
As far as we can under the law, GP at Hand doesn’t accept any other terms or rules (direct or indirect) that are outside of these terms or those imposed by the NHS as part of our Primary Care Contract.
If you can’t get our services
There might be times outside our control when we can’t provide our services.
We’re not responsible if this happens, but if it does, we’ll do anything we reasonably can to make sure you can use our services again as soon as possible.
13. How to make a complaint
If you have a complaint, please contact us and we’ll do our best to fix the problem. We reply to all complaints in line with the rules and regulations that apply to our services.
14. Changes to these terms
These terms are always available on our website. We change these terms from time to time. We may not always tell you when we make a change.
If we make any changes that affect your rights or what we need from you, then we’ll let you know.
If you don’t agree with the changes, you can apply to the NHS to move your GP registration to another practice.
If you continue to use our services, we will assume that you’re happy with any new terms.
15. Other things you should know
Laws and regulations
The Care Quality Commission regulates our clinical services, such as video and audio consultations.
Our services follow UK laws and regulations.
Enforcement
These terms are an agreement between you and us. They do not apply to other people. Only you can take legal action on your agreement with us, unless you are a parent or guardian acting on behalf of your child.
Legal decisions and judgements
These terms are governed by the laws of England and Wales. If you want to take legal action relating to these terms, it must be through the courts of England and Wales.
Our companies and partners
These terms and conditions are an agreement between you and the following companies.
Some of our clinical services are provided by:
Babylon Healthcare Services Limited, trading as eMed
184-193 Drummond Street, London NW1 3HP
Company number: 09229684
GP at Hand services are provided by:
GP at Hand, 139 Lillie Road, London SW6 7SX
Page last reviewed: 25 October 2024