Welcome to The Medical Secretariat

I’m Sue Wilcox, the owner of The Medical Secretariat, and I’m an AMSPAR qualified medical secretary.

I know how difficult it can be to secure and retain the services of a truly high-quality medical secretary. This may vary from area to area, but it’s still very hard. It may be tempting to take someone on who has no training or experience but remember; this is your business and your reputation. Is it really wise to take such a risk? Wouldn’t you rather have someone who understands private practice and knows exactly what they are doing?

I’ve been working with doctors in private practice for 40 years and have helped many consultants to manage, develop and grow their private practices. I’m also a very experienced medico-legal secretary.

I’ve worked with practices of all sizes – from single practitioner private practices to larger practices made up of groups of consultants.

My knowledge and expertise mean that I can give you expert guidance in your own private practice.

How to Set Up Remote Consultations

How to set up a remote consultation system for your private practice during lockdown … and beyond

Download the Medical Secretariat Guide

Together We’re Stronger – And Can Give You Truly Exceptional Service

Obviously I can’t do this on my own! I’m supported by a talented and dedicated team (see Meet Our Team page) from diverse backgrounds who have a wide range of skills and experience which complement my own.

With my team, we can take care of the day-to-day running of your private practice, leaving you free to get on with doing what you do best – seeing and treating your patients.

If you don’t want to employ someone or if you don’t need help full-time, then you don’t have to. Our team is here to support you for however many hours you need per week or per month. Get in touch to find out how.

What We Do

In one sentence, we provide a high quality reliable and professional medical secretarial/PA and administrative service to doctors in private clinical and medico-legal practice throughout the UK.

We can provide all of the following services from our offices:-

We’re organised, efficient, resourceful and experienced; we do what we do very well indeed and have testimonials from other doctors to prove this.

We currently work with consultants in:

Dermatology

Rheumatology

Vascular Surgery

Paediatrics

Cardiology

Psychiatry

ENT

Orthopaedics

Gastroenterology

Microbiology

… but we can tackle any speciality. Our medical secretaries and transcribers are highly skilled with broad medical terminology and strong English grammar. Our typed work is accurate and always professionally presented.

We can sometimes provide short-term help to consultants who already have their own in-house team. If your own medical secretary or PA is unexpectedly off sick, on holiday, or you have an urgent piece of work which you need to get done, contact us. If we can, we’ll help you. When your staff are overloaded, entrusting us to type a Clinic or medical report (or a backlog of Clinics or pile of medical reports!) could make all the difference.

We are registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office, we have employers’ liability insurance, professional indemnity and public liability insurance. We are also members of the Federation of Small Businesses.

That’s enough about us!

How We Can Help You

You can find much more information about this here but below is a small sample of what we can do for you.

We’ll help you to run your private practice efficiently. We’ll work closely with you so that we fully understand your private practice, what you expect of us, and how you like things done. We can also provide a review of your existing systems and, if appropriate and if you invite us to do so, advise you on any refinements which we feel may improve the efficiency and productivity of your practice.
If you want to grow your private practice, we can help with that. We will work with you to market your practice, raise your profile, and attract new patients. Once a prospective new patient contacts us, we are very skilled at turning an enquiry into a patient who actually comes to see you.
If you are new to private practice, we can give you help and guidance to set this up and we have enormous knowledge and expertise which we can share with you. Our medical secretarial service is tailored to you! We also work with website designers, social media experts and medical billing companies, all of whom may be involved in a successful private practice.
We can help you to be GDPR compliant. We’ve undergone GDPR training, we follow strict confidentiality procedures, and have expertise in handling Special Category Data (click here to read our Data Privacy Notice). We also work with a company who has specialist knowledge of GDPR for medical practices. Ask us for details and we will be happy to put you in touch.

We understand the Competition & Markets Authority requirements and can ensure that you meet your obligations to these.
Our entire team will handle your patients with genuine warmth and empathy. We’re great on the phone and patients like and trust us. We will be the shop window for your practice and the way we interact with your existing patients and potential patients is crucial. If this isn’t done properly, you will lose work and the reputation of your practice may suffer.
We will represent you in the way we believe you’d like – professional, polite, friendly, kind and helpful.
We will give you peace of mind that your patient’s treatment journey with you is happening as you have directed – we’re very thorough and we don’t miss things.
We can advise you on cloud-based practice management software and paper-free or paper-lite systems. If you join us and already have practice management software, we can work with that! We already have experience with most of the major systems including DGL Practice Manager, PracticePal, Cliniko and Carebit, but we are IT savvy and can learn how to use new software quickly.
Finally, we have an exciting new service which offers consultants advice on setting up and running a remote consultation service or Virtual Clinic. Please contact Sue Wilcox if you would like to receive further information.

Superb organizational skills

I have been working with Sue for 24 years. I could not have had a more efficient and reliable private secretary. She has superb organizational skills, a strong customer focus coupled with the initiative to make life easy for her consultants. She has excellent attention to detail in report writing and can always be relied… Read more “Superb organizational skills”

Easier For You

We will be your ‘virtual’ office – you won’t need to provide a workspace for us or supply equipment as we take care of that for you. We’ll be working from our offices, not yours, and we’ll be using our own desks, computers and printers.

We don’t really like the terms ‘virtual office’ or ‘virtual assistant’ because we will be a very real and integral part of your practice – we will be at the heart of what you do and the focal point for your private practice. Even at a distance, our service is entirely equal to a face-to-face provider, saves additional costs and means that you don’t have to pay for a fixed office.

Sue Wilcox will liaise closely with you to understand your practice and how you like things done and, if necessary, she will make recommendations for how we can work with you effectively and efficiently in your private practice. You will then be allocated your own medical secretary or PA who Sue feels is best matched to your requirements and who will work to your own guidelines and practice information to provide the best service we can to you and your patients. We will always work within your guidelines to provide a consistently high service to your patients on your behalf. If you are local to us in the West Midlands, we will come to meet you in person. Otherwise, we will invite you to meet us virtually on a Zoom chat before we begin working with you.

You’ll have the benefit of taking us on without the cost of advertising, recruitment and training. You don’t need to employ us under IR35 legislation or have the headaches which can come with the considerable legal responsibilities and expense of employing staff. You’ll have no need to worry about whether we are only working for you (we’re not!) and we take care of our team’s tax, National Insurance, holiday and sickness pay and pension as your team are employed by The Medical Secretariat Limited or are contractors to us.

If you already have your own team and need us to undertake a specific function with your practice, that’s fine! We're also experienced in working in conjunction with existing in-house teams; it is our goal to fit in seamlessly with your own staff and be considered an extension of it. We believe that we can provide a medical secretarial and administrative service to you which is good value and cost-effective because you only pay for what you use. We charge on an hourly rate, based on the time we spend doing your work. Our fees start from £30 per hour, and for medico-legal work we charge a percentage of the consultant’s report fee. We never ‘round up’ the time taken to do your work – we only charge you for exactly what you use. You’ll find further details on our Fees page or get in touch with us directly if you want to know more.

Want To Learn More?

Have a look around our website! If you like what you see and would like to have a chat about what you are looking for, get in touch with The Medical Secretariat, give me a ring on 0121 242 3299 or send me a message via our Contact form or we can arrange a video call, if you’d prefer.