Courtfield Summer Newsletter 2026

Following the hottest May day on record and with the end of the exam season in sight, it seemed an appropriate time to remind those of you travelling abroad this summer, that we are able to help with all travel advice and vaccinations (except for yellow fever).

Please in the first instance email us at enquiries@courtfieldpp.co.uk with any questions about vaccinations/malaria medication required for your travel destination and our secretary will send you a copy of your current vaccination status together with advice on vaccinations required for your destination.

If this does not answer your questions, then please do book a telephone, video or face-to-face consultation for further advice and administration of vaccines as necessary.

The recent outbreaks of meningitis B in Kent and Reading remind us all of the importance of protection against this potentially deadly bacteria.

It is particularly important to protect students in their late teenage years and early 20s, which is why at Courtfield we have always written to our patients when they turn 18 to offer them a meningitis B vaccination or booster.  During the recent outbreak, we were therefore relieved to find, on viewing our records, that many of our university-age patients had already been vaccinated.

There are two meningitis B vaccines that currently exist in the UK: Trumenba and Bexsero.

At present, the only vaccine available is Trumenba, which is the US version of the Meningitis B vaccine and provides excellent protection. It is given as two doses, six months apart.

Bexsero is the UK version and remains unavailable to the private sector at the present time.

Although Bexsero and Trumenba provide almost identical levels of protection against Meningitis B, they work in slightly different ways and so cannot be used interchangeably.

We remain in weekly contact with the manufacturers and suppliers of Bexsero and will be sure to let you know once this is available. This is particularly relevant for patients who are due a Bexsero booster and cannot therefore have the Trumenba vaccine as a substitute booster instead.

To help facilitate this, we recently organised nurse-led clinics across two consecutive Saturdays, to enable us to charge you the cost of the vaccine only, with no additional consultation or administration fee.

We have already contacted all unvaccinated patients on our waiting list aged 16-25, to offer the Trumenba vaccine.

We have understandably had many requests from patients outside of this age group. The risk of contracting meningitis B over the age of 25 and under the age of 16 is very low but of course this is not the same as no risk. Trumenba vaccine is licensed for use over the age of 10.

We are pleased to let you know that we have now organised another nurse-led clinic, which will take place on Saturday 13^th June.

For the nurse-led clinic, the fee is £170 for each dose of vaccine. If you would prefer that one of our doctors administer the vaccine, an additional consultation fee of £80 per appointment will apply.

Please contact our reception team on 020 7373 3541 to book your appointment.

There are currently no guidelines regarding whether to give a booster at the age of 18, if Meningitis B has already been given.

We believe however that it is important to give a booster at age 18 in order to enhance protection during university years.

We will be holding an evening meeting on Monday 15^th June with the aim of teaching you how to manage childhood emergencies such as collapse, choking, allergies, fainting, common injuries etc. This will be led by Norman Abbott, who has been a Resuscitation Trainer with the London Ambulance service for over 45 years.  Norman has been delivering our annual resuscitation/anaphylaxis training (for all of our doctors and admin team) for many years.

The meeting will start at 7pm (finishing at 8.30pm) and is limited to 20 places in total. There is no charge to attend.

If you would like to attend, please let us know as places will be allocated on a first come, first served basis.

We hope this will be the first of a series of evening educational meetings, and we would be very interested to hear from you about other topics that you would like us to cover in future sessions.

July and August are hopefully the quieter months of the year and therefore an excellent time to focus on your health and to take steps to ensure that you stay well in the decades ahead, whatever your age.

In particular, it is important to ensure you are up to date with screening for common cancers and cardiovascular disease, both of which can develop silently without obvious symptoms. We generally recommend regular health screening from the age of 40 onwards.

When detected early, many cancers can be cured, while conditions such as high blood pressure and prediabetes can be identified and managed before progressing to more serious illnesses such as heart disease or stroke.

Please see our website for further information on health screening at Courtfield.

Unfortunately dealing with medical insurance companies has become increasingly difficult, with some providers taking up to one year to settle our invoices. This has been particularly noticeable with CIGNA Health Insurance. As a result, many of our colleagues in other private GP practices have stopped accepting insurance payments altogether or are charging higher fees for insured patients.

We understand that many of you will want to continue to use your insurance and, for this reason, we will continue to accept insurance payments. However, we hope you will understand that for those of you whose insurance company does not settle our invoice within 60 days, we will now be asking you to settle the outstanding balance with us directly.

In addition, we are now requiring a Guarantee of Payment or authorisation code for each appointment. We appreciate your understanding and continued support with this.

We are hopeful that upcoming changes in legislation, which are expected to require suppliers to settle invoices within 60 days, will help resolve this issue moving forward.

If you have a spare moment, we would be incredibly grateful if you could leave us a Google review to help support our online presence. We truly appreciate the wonderful feedback our patients have already shared on our Google page so far.

We are also very grateful for our growing Instagram community! We started our Instagram page last year and now have over 800 followers. We post regular updates and health advice and would be delighted if as many of our patients as possible followed us- a link to our Instagram page can be found here. It’s a great way for us to communicate with you without bombarding your inbox with emails.

May we take this opportunity to wish you a thoroughly enjoyable summer!

Best wishes from the team at Courtfield Private Practice