Steer clear of Newcastle Medical Centre!!
Hi everyone, I’ve literally just created this account to warn people about Newcastle Medical Centre as I recently had an awful and distressing experience with them. I know that they’re currently pushing loads of ai ads on instagram, and I’ve even noticed an account on here that posts extremely flattering ai comments about the practice that I suspect is actually just them. So hopefully this makes people reconsider. This is quite a long post but believe it or not this is the quick version of the story. Also apologies for the formatting, I’m on my phone.
I initially contacted Newcastle Medical Centre in January after seeing someone recommend them on here, they seemed to have the most reasonable pricing and relatively short wait times. This was before I had seen their online ai ad campaign. Their website was quite basic (not like what it is now) and made it seem like it was an ordinary local practice that happened to have a psychiatrist.
The fella I had emailed outlined the cost and said it the whole process typically took 2 months from initial consultation to final psychiatric evaluation. I was informed that the €700 fee covered bloods, ecg, initial psychological evaluation, psychiatric assessment, and the first prescription where appropriate. I was then in contact with a girl from the adhd team, I asked her if I could do the bloods and ECG with my own GP as it was more convenient for me. She then said she would ring me to discuss further. We arranged a time over email for her to ring me, and she didn’t call. I got back in touch again, the same thing happened again (twice!!).
When I finally got her on the phone, she asked me to pay the €700 fee upfront. I was confused as I thought we were just discussing the overall process and what bloods I would need from my GP. She then informed me that this phone call was actually the initial psychological assessment. The “assessment“ lasted about 10/15 minutes, and although she was very nice, as far as I was aware at the time she was not a psychologist, just an administrative worker.
She then told me she would email me a payment link (as I couldn’t be booked in with the psychiatrist until I had paid) and some forms to fill out to send to the psychiatrist along with her assessment. I had to email her daily for over a week for the payment link and the forms, as each time she said she had sent them, I hadn’t received anything (checked spam folders, etc, every. single. time.). The next available appointment with the psychiatrist ended up being 6 months later (not the 2 months as initially claimed). This was only made clear after I had paid the €700.
When I contacted them asking about bloods they told me that I just needed a “regular“ blood panel, when I told them that my GP wouldnt do the bloods unless they provided a list of what they needed to test for, they were adamant that they didn’t need to provide any more details. This back and forth went on for a week before my scheduled bloods appointment, until I got a hold of a different person who promptly provided me the full list of what was needed.
I then put the whole process on the back burner until the week before my psychiatric assessment. I rang again to ask if the appointment would be online or in person (as I live quite far away I would need to book the afternoon off work). I was told that it would be in person.
The day of my appointment I rang again to confirm the time as the time of my appointment, as I had noticed it was in the evening outside of their regular opening hours. The person on the other side of the phone said that I didn’t appear to be in their books at all and that furthermore, all psychiatric appointments were done online. Mind you this was 2 hours before my “appointment“. I forwarded her the email confirmation I had received from the other girl I had been dealing with and she said she would call me back within the half hour. Nobody called, so I called back and was told again that someone would call me back. At 30 mins before my “appointment“, I received a call informing me that there was a mix up and that I was in fact in their books, but that unfortunately the psychiatrist had actually “called in sick” (how convenient) so my appointment would have to be rescheduled. I questioned why I hadn’t been informed earlier in the day about the Dr being absent if I was indeed “in their books“ for today, and was lied to and told that they had attempted to call me but that I never answered.
Anyway, the next week I had my rescheduled zoom call with Dr Alex Tsipouridis (not the Dr I was originally supposed to have my assessment with). He was quite nice but didnt seem to ask many in depth questions, the assessment lasted max 30 minutes. But hey, I’m not the professional. At the end of the call he informed me that in his opinion I had very clear adhd and briefly discussed medication and treatment plan. When I asked for specifically non-medication advice he said that he didn’t have the time to discuss but that ADHD Ireland was a great resource (which is true, however if I am paying for an extremely expensive private assessment I would expect treatment plan from the Dr himself). He said that he would start me on meds and send the script off to my pharmacy after the call, and that I would receive a detailed assessment report in approximately 2 weeks. I waited a few days before going to the pharmacy to pick up my prescription as I expected that there might be delays, little did I know what was in store for me. This began my 3 weeks of administrative agony.
The pharmacy said they hadn’t received my script and to give the practice a call to make sure they didn’t mix it up with another local pharmacy which is similarly named. When I called Newcastle, they said there was nothing on my file about a prescription and that they would call me back. No call came. I called the next day, spoke with someone else who said they would look into it for me and call me back. No call came. I rang almost every day for nearly 3 weeks, receiving promises of calls back that never materialised. This process was highly distressing, and at one stage I thought that I must have been scammed. The back and forth was so draining, I questioned if I should just give up. Over the course of the 3 weeks the blame was shifted around to different people, originally there was nothing on my file, then it was that the Dr wouldnt ring them back (this was when I found out that the Dr wasn’t based in Newcastle Medical Centre at all, and only worked occasional days for them completely via zoom), then it was that they had the wrong pharmacy details (even though many times over the phone I double-checked the pharmacy they had on file).
Alongside these calls that went nowhere, I had emailed as well, as I wanted to have a paper trail. I detailed my experience, the complete and utter administrative disorganisation, and the indignity with which I was being treated, and I got a lovely considerate heartfelt response… that had been copy and pasted from ChatGPT (they were so lazy as to even include the prompt they used in their email)!! Obviously this should never be acceptable in any medical setting, but especially not when you’re paying so much money for a private assessment. The level of unprofessionalism and quite frankly extreme data protection risks was so unfathomable and quite honestly insulting. It actually made me cry.
In my most recent call to them last week I said that the next time they would be hearing from a solicitor. Lo and behold, 2 days later I have a prescription and a report.
This whole experience has broken me. I dread to see how the rest of my experience with Newcastle goes. I will have to stick with them for the near future as I am still titrating my medication. If it’s anything like my past month from hell I might actually just give up.
I will definitely be looking to transfer my care (after my titration) to another psychiatrist (preferably based in Dublin), if anyone has any recommendations.
I will say, although the staff is criminally disorganised and some seem to be pathological liars, many of them were quite lovely to speak to. Lovely but incompetent. I think that the staff do not have the correct training, and that Newcastle does not have the capacity whatsoever to be running an adhd clinic.
TLDR: I had a traumatic and unprofessional experience with Newcastle Medical Centre. They lied to me multiple times, and seem to clearly prioritise profiting from the lack of adult adhd options as opposed to providing even a most basic level of treatment. I do not recommend them at all. Beware