I have recently had quite a lot of contact with the NHS as my son has been very ill. A GP and a hospital consultant both failed to diagnose his chronic autoimmune condition, one which apparently affects 1 in 1000 of our population. I had to work very hard to get the NHS to take him seriously, going private in the end.

The 10-minute consultation cost me £175 (no VAT in human medicine, unlike veterinary) and the whole experience served to reinforce to me how very competent our vets are. I don't blame the GP for missing the condition, as it had an unusual presentation, but how a specialist (the first consultant) could miss it I have no idea. Certainly an equivalent condition, prevalence wise, such as Addison's or diabetes which affects around 1 in 1000 of our patients would not be missed by our vets. Which led me to realise that, as we deal with the vast majority of diagnoses and surgical operations ourselves, and only refer for specialist procedures, actually we are not equivalent to human GPs but have more advanced training in many aspects of veterinary health, and certainly at least at the level of the  first consultant we saw with my son.

To provide all this at a cost of around £18 (plus the VAT) for a first consultation and £13.50 for a follow-up, strikes me as extremely good value! Our clients will often say to us ' I wish the hospital provided as good a service as you do' and, nice as it is to have the appreciation, I have never taken too much notice. However, taking into account my recent experiences, I am now in total agreement.

I think this was an unfortunate incident, and the NHS did a fantastic job reconstructing my face after my accident last April, for which I will be eternally grateful. However, because the NHS is seen as being free at the point of contact, we suffer by comparison as we have to charge for our services. So I thought it was worth blowing our own trumpet on this rare occasion!

Happily, with the correct diagnosis and treatment my boy is feeling much better, so hopefully all's well that ends well.