How to check a private clinician is registered

Anyone treating you privately in the UK should be on a public register, and checking takes about a minute. A listing on Quokka is not a credential check: we are a marketplace, not a regulator: so this is worth doing yourself.

Which register

Clinician	Regulator	Register
Doctor, including GPs	General Medical Council	gmc-uk.org
Dentist, hygienist, therapist	General Dental Council	gdc-uk.org
Physiotherapist, podiatrist, dietitian, paramedic, psychologist	Health and Care Professions Council	hcpc-uk.org
Osteopath	General Osteopathic Council	osteopathy.org.uk
Chiropractor	General Chiropractic Council	gcc-uk.org
Nurse, midwife	Nursing and Midwifery Council	nmc.org.uk
Pharmacist	General Pharmaceutical Council	pharmacyregulation.org

All are free, searchable by name, and open to the public.

"Psychologist" and "psychotherapist" are not the same in law. Specific titles such as clinical psychologist and practitioner psychologist are protected and HCPC-registered; "psychotherapist" and "counsellor" are not protected titles in the UK, and practitioners are often listed voluntarily with the BACP or UKCP instead. That is a real difference worth knowing before you book.

What to check

• That they are on the register at all, under the name they are practising under.
• Their registration number, which serious practitioners publish.
• Any conditions or restrictions. Registers show these, and they are the reason to look.
• For doctors: whether they are on the GP Register or the Specialist Register, which tells you what they are formally qualified as, not merely that they are a doctor.

What the register does not tell you

It tells you someone is qualified and permitted to practise. It does not tell you whether they are any good, whether they are the right person for your problem, or whether they are experienced in the specific thing you need. Those are different questions, and a register cannot answer them.

What a CQC rating adds, and what it doesn't

Where a practice carries out regulated activities in England, it must register with the Care Quality Commission, which inspects and rates. Where we hold a rating for a practice we show it with the date of the inspection, and link to the CQC's own record.

Three things to understand about it:

• The date matters. A rating can be years old, and can even predate the current owner of the practice, so "rated Good" is a statement about a known moment rather than about today.
• It rates the practice, not the person. A well-run clinic can employ anyone on the register.
• Absence means nothing. The CQC registers regulated activities, so entire categories fall outside it: most physiotherapy practices, for instance, are not on the register at all, nationally. This is why we show nothing where there is no rating rather than "not rated": an empty rating would read as a bad one, and for most practices it would simply be wrong.

CQC information is used under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

In Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland

The CQC covers England only. The equivalents are Healthcare Improvement Scotland, Healthcare Inspectorate Wales, and the Regulation and Quality Improvement Authority in Northern Ireland. The clinician registers above are UK-wide.

A note on what we do

We do not vet clinicians and we do not verify credentials. What we do is read what practices publish about themselves and present it consistently. Where a practice is registered with the CQC, we surface the regulator's own judgement with a link so you can check it. The register is the authority; we are pointing at it.