the NHS

com[plain to your local MP - they then write to chief exec of trust demanding to know why one of their constituents are being made to wait/what the hells going on etc etc - chief exec writes to consultant saying '' see this person at once as i have local MP on my back'' - voila you jump the queue - just a shame about all the other poor !!!!!!s who have to wait even longer

Paying for a private consultation and then using the nhs is excellent advice.
Patients will probably want to talk to their GP about which consultant would be best for, sorry can't remember if the GP has to write a referral letter as well. A GP will also know which of the nhs hospitals which he can refer people to has the shortest waiting list for particular conditions.
Having written this, I'm hoping I've got it right. Things in the nhs are changing so rapidly at the moment -Payment By Results, Choose and Book (known in the trade as choose, book and cancel), hospitals delaying things for financial reasons, or even cutting back and cutting out - that trying to keep up to date with what's what in the nhs is like herding cats.
Many people go abroad for treatment and have varying experiences. Many people pay for their treatment in the uk and have varying experiences. However, should anything go wrong the good old nhs usually picks up the pieces.

If you can afford it, do pay for a private initial consultation as many of the others have said. It does work.

Alternatively, if you can't afford to do this, pester your GP as much as is humanly possible. When GP's refer, they usually specify how urgent *they* think it is. If they're requesting an urgent/ soon appt, sometimes we take notice, sometimes we don't, as this is one of the areas when we use our clinical judgement to decide on the patient's behalf. But if a GP has marked you down as routine, then we *always* go with what the GP says for obvious reasons!!

So, check with your GP in the first instance to find out what priority they referred you as. Second, tell them your symptoms have worsened and ask them to write again to escalate your appointment.

Thirdly, we do take notice if individuals ring up and tell us their symptoms have worsened and how much longer are they going to have to wait. GP referral information is often inadequate at best, yet we are expected to decide how urgently someone needs seeing on the basis of what the GP writes, so to get more details from the patient direct can often help us decide how urgent someone really is.

So you could try ringing the consultant's secretary direct and asking how long you will have to wait. He or she won't have the authority to make that decision so she'll have to get your notes and pass on your phone message to the consultant or one of their registrars, so at least it means that someone will look at your case instead of just waiting for it to come to the top of the list.

HTH!

Oh, forgot to say. In the next couple of years, techically your GP will be able to look on their computer, see what consultants are available within a certain radius, see who's got the shortest waiting lists, and if you agree, send you there even if it's out of town. Being on the other end of that system, I am loathing and dreading it as it has not been properly thought through, but that's a different story. At the moment, your GP will only have a contract with their local healthcare provider to treat you, and you *can* get referred elsewhere, but they'll have to pay for your treatment which obviously they can't often afford, so they keep quiet about it