We had heard that in order for a GP to access the new occupational health service provided by Heales Medical it would be necessary for the practice first to register with Heales.  We queried this and their response is:

• It is not essential for an employee's practice to be registered with Heales Medical provided that the employee is an individual on the National Performers List. 
• That said, registration for a practice is free of charge and allows access to an on-line portal which provides extensive information on the Occupational Health services provided by Heales together with a tariff of charges.
• Heales Medical understands that sometimes a GP would like to self-refer and not have the practice informed of their personal circumstances.  In such a case the GP should contact Abigail Turner, their contract manager, direct on 0944 842 1755 or on 07494 957 770.

We did suggest that we might be able to get all practices registered with Heales in one batch but they say that because of data protection concerns each practice would need to register individually, but the process is not overly complicated:

1. An individual from the practice, ideally a senior partner or someone who is approved to authorise payment, needs to read through the information page and accept our terms and conditions; both can be accessed via the following link: https://www.heales.com/tl/gpdent. 
2. At the bottom of the information page is a tab to click entitled 'Register your Practice'.  All that is necessary to register is the practice's unique reference code.
3. A primary user needs to be assigned; this could be the practice manager or whomever would be responsible for making any referrals to Heales.