NPPL Medical Declaration

[swp53]

Hi All,
I have a lapsed NPPL SSEA and approached my GP for a new medical declaration to be signed so that I could get current again.
She advised it should be £83.50 but she will do it for £60 which seems excessive for a signature and practice stamp to say I am fit enough to drive an HGV/PSV. Admittadly when the original was done in 2003 she charged me £20 so inflation takes effect.
I am 59 and she wants a urine sample and to check my blood pressure so is that whats costing so much?
I wonder what other NPPL holders are charged if anything by there GP?
Regards,
Steve

[pulse1]

Can't remember exactly but it was about £20, I'm 72 and have more trouble getting travel insurance.

[McGoonagall]

I was charged nothing. My GP agreed I was fit to DVLA standards for HGV driving and after reading the notes simply signed and stamped it.

[znww5]

For comparison, I'm the same age and my Class 2 medical with ECG, urine test, sight test and BP check and the annual rather amusing chat with the medic) cost me £130.

My local surgery charges £40 for signing an NPPL medical declaration.

[DavidWoodward]

I got mine signed for £20. Your GP seems to be charging an excessive amount.

[biffo28]

Mine was free, I had very young and keen GP who wanted to do all sorts of examinations. I reminded her that it wasn't required and a signature would do!
She was happy to do that thankfully.

[BEagle]

I have a lapsed NPPL SSEA and approached my GP for a new medical declaration to be signed so that I could get current again.

She advised it should be £83.50 but she will do it for £60 which seems excessive for a signature and practice stamp to say I am fit enough to drive an HGV/PSV. Admittadly when the original was done in 2003 she charged me £20 so inflation takes effect.

I am 59 and she wants a urine sample and to check my blood pressure so is that whats costing so much?

I suspect the urine and BP thing is yet another practice wheeze to score 'performance indicator' points so that they can extract more money from the NHS. There is NO standard price for simple biro time....

Unless you have some medical condition, her price is absurd - she is indeed extracting the urine!

[swp53]

Hi All,
Thanks for the replys my initial thought was 2 words the second being OFF.
No underlying medical condition that I am aware off. Non smoker who drinks maybe 8 units of alcohol per week sometimes none but admittedly could do with shedding a couple of stone to improve W&B.
I may enquire with an AME the cost of the new Part-MED which will cover my NPPL and be ready for the LAPL.
Regards,
Steve

[McGoonagall]

My GP was a bit confused and compared it to an examination required by the DVLA. I said that I was declaring myself fit to that standard and did he agree. Being a bit of an old curmudgeonly bugger he read the print outs I provided and told me he could not possibly charge for a self certification, which essentially it is.

What does piss me off is that should I want to progress to a full PPL then the CAA will ignore the fact that I hold a valid train drivers medical. Comparing the standards for that and a CAA Class1 medical there are very few differences. Apart from the spirometry and the advisory tests there is bugger all in reality, a slightly more stringent uncorrected eyesight requirement for the CAA is balanced by a slightly more stringent hearing requirement for the railway. Bloody madness.

[Crash one]

My GP charges £15 for her autograph.
At 72 I'm happy with that.

[jxk]

I think it's all wrong that you think you should able to walk into a doctor's surgery and expect them to just sign a medical declaration without doing some simple checks and making a small charge for it. BP and urine test are a minimum I would expect; relatively easy to do but should give some indication of your general state of health.
After all if you go to an optician, dentist. solicitor or any other professional service you would expect to pay. Or perhaps you expect the NHS to pay for your flying too on mental grounds!

[patowalker]

My surgery do not have a published fee for the NPPL medical declaration, so they apply the fee charged to the police for checking the medical records of persons seeking a shotgun licence, i.e. £28.50.

[gemma10]

My class 2 last Sunday was £180. Not bad for half hours work.:(

[xrayalpha]

First: It is NOT the standard for an HGV, it is professional driving such as a mini-cab or minibus. With an HGV medical there are all sorts of tests required. Not so with an NPPL.

Second: this page from the BMA expalins why GPs might charge for a signature:
BMA - Why GPs sometimes charge fees (http://bma.org.uk/practical-support-at-work/pay-fees-allowances/fees/why-gps-sometimes-charge-fees)

The GP, in order to cover their legal backside, must actually look through your medical history. Now, since they have four minute (or whatever) slots, that means taking a little time.

A good level to start is the signature on a passport photo - which comes in at about £20. Of course, that does not need a full examination of one's medical history. But if - like me - you never see your GP, then a full examination of the paperwrk doesn't take long!

Of course, if your medical history is more complex, then the doctor might take longer to read your file - and just like a more complex repair to your washine machine costs more, so will that.

Of course, it could be argued that your GP will know your medical history by heart if you are a frequent visitor!

Unfortunately (or fortunately) we no longer have the family GP for life.

My mother was a GP all her life in the same practice and she knew the medical histories of about 6,000 patients - and the links to their families (close and extended) off by heart, it seemed. So she probably wouldn't have felt the need to examine your records closely.

Every time my wife goes to our local GP surgery, she gets a different GP (usually a trainee!), so no prior knowledge of her or her family's history.

That's progress!

ps. There is a new revised NPPL medical form published the other day.

[Gertrude the Wombat]

My GP spent an evening of his own time reading all the relevant documentation (some dozens of pages of it) before being prepared to sign that he understood what he was signing. I think he hadn't done an NPPL declaration before - he certainly hadn't done one for someone with exactly my medical history (which involved additional sets of documentation to read).

I don't do an evening's work for £60, after a full day at work!!

[hlmmic]

My doctor charged me £67 for an NPPL in March 2011. seems to be that some will do it really cheaply and others charge a lot, the most expensive one I heard was £120 which seems a bit over the top for a blood pressure and eyesight test!

[BEagle]

Quite possibly the most difficult part of the entire NPPL scheme has proved to be the medical aspect. Not the requirements themselves, but the lack of co-operation from a number of non-AME GPs.

If we were starting the whole thing again from scratch, I'd suggest a very basic 'Class 3' medical to be conducted by AMEs and would leave GPs out of the scheme altogether.

[Dave Gittins]

My GP knows me fairly well and knows my history (I have regular checkups due to an MI in 1998 and an annual dose of flu / coff / sore throat despite the jabs) but he still wanted to read all the CAA paperwork and understand what he was getting himself into before he signed my Med Dec.

Initially he was going to charge me about £72.00 but it came down to £60 after some head scratching, which is the same as he'd charge a taxi driver.

Taxi driver; aeroplane driver; Evel Kneival

[gordon field]

Cycled down to see him BP 120/68, general chat and a fiver in his charity box.