Practitioner listing

Why there is no lead form on this site

Most publications in this sector make their money by collecting enquiries and selling them to clinics. We do not, and we will not. Sending a person who has just read that the central claim of a category is unproven to a provider we have never assessed would contradict the whole document. It would also be the most profitable thing we could do, which is why saying so plainly matters.

What the listing is

A paid directory entry. Alphabetical. Labelled paid. Never ranked, never scored, never described as recommended, best, trusted, verified or approved. It contains only facts a reader can check for themselves against a public register or a regulator, and nothing else at all.

A listing is not a recommendation. We have not assessed anybody's clinical practice, and we are not in a position to. What a listing establishes is that a practitioner has disclosed a set of independently verifiable facts and is content for them to be published next to their name. That is worth something. It is not worth what a recommendation would be worth, and we are not going to let it be read as one.

What a listing may contain

Six fields, all verifiable by the reader, and nothing more.

1. Name and the register they appear on, with their registration number. Checkable free on the relevant regulator's public register.
2. Premises regulator reference, where the premises fall within the scope of a regulator. Checkable on that regulator's public register.
3. Prescriber arrangement. Whether the practitioner is a prescriber, and if not, how prescription only medicines used in their practice are prescribed and by someone who has assessed the patient.
4. Indemnity. That indemnity insurance covering this procedure is held, and the insurer's name.
5. Written complications policy. That one exists, is given to patients in writing, and includes an out of hours contact route.
6. Town or city. So a reader knows where they are.

No description of technique. No claims about results. No years of experience. No photographs. No treatment menu. No prices. No links to the practitioner's own site, because this site does not link to commercial providers and a paid listing is not going to be the exception.

What we refuse to list, at any price

Publishing this is more useful than publishing the criteria, so here it is.

• Anyone who will not give a registration number, or who is on no professional register at all.
• Anyone who cannot name an indemnity insurer.
• Anyone with no written complications policy or no out of hours contact route.
• Anyone whose practice uses a remote prescribing arrangement, meaning a prescriber who does not assess the patient.
• Anyone advertising this or any cosmetic treatment to people under eighteen.
• Anyone advertising cosmetic injectables as a prize, a competition entry, a party service or a time limited discount that expires within the consultation.
• Anyone publishing satisfaction rates, outcome percentages or duration figures they cannot attribute to a study they can produce.
• Anyone publishing before and after imagery that is not genuine, representative and taken under consistent conditions.
• Anyone who asks us to soften, remove or qualify anything in this document as part of the arrangement.
• Anyone who asks to be described as recommended, verified, approved or vetted.

The last two are refusals we expect to have to make, and we would rather have written them down in advance than have the conversation from a standing start.

The rate

One hundred and twenty pounds per year per practitioner, paid annually, no discounts, no multi entry rates, no agency rates. Everyone pays the same because a differential rate is the beginning of a differential listing. The rate is published here so that it is not negotiable.

The listing itself

It is empty. Nobody is listed, because we have not yet accepted anyone under these criteria.

An empty directory is a reasonable thing to publish and we would rather say so than pad it. When it has entries they will appear here, alphabetically, labelled paid, with the six fields above and nothing else, and this paragraph will say how many there are and when it was last checked.

Verification, and its limits

Before publishing an entry we check the registration number against the relevant public register and the premises reference against the relevant regulator's register. We ask for sight of the indemnity certificate and the written complications policy. We recheck annually and at renewal, and we remove an entry if a registration lapses or a restriction appears.

What that does not amount to, and we want to be exact about it: we do not observe practice, we do not audit outcomes, we do not inspect premises, we do not review consent processes and we do not verify anything a practitioner says about their results. A listing means the facts in it are true. It does not mean the practice behind them is good, and no reader should treat it as though it did.

If you are a reader rather than a practitioner

The criteria above are a better use of this page than the listing will ever be. Every one of the six fields is something you can ask any practitioner directly, and every one of the refusals is a pattern you can look for yourself. The section on questions a clinic cannot answer with marketing copy turns them into questions you can ask out loud.