Many NHS Trusts and NHS Foundation Trusts offer private healthcare services. Many have created a separate logo and visual style for these services which is allowed, as these are private, not NHS, services.
As these private services are usually delivered in NHS facilities, it would be virtually impossible to avoid patients seeing the NHS Identity when interacting with these services.
Therefore, Trusts are allowed to use their NHS organisation’s logo on communications specifically about their NHS private healthcare services, to show patients who provides the service. The NHS organisational logo must be placed in a supporting position with a strapline such as ‘Services provided by’.
Trusts that offer private healthcare services should market and promote their private healthcare services completely separately. They should not market or promote these services within their NHS communications to patients and the public (e.g. NHS appointment letters, NHS test results, NHS Foundation Trust membership communications etc.).
If the Trust chooses to use their organisational website to house pages about their private services, then it must be in a clearly differentiated section.
All communications must make it clear that patients have to pay for NHS private healthcare services.
If a third party is involved in providing the private healthcare, then the NHS Identity cannot be used as this would be misleading, and third parties cannot profit from use of the NHS Identity.
