How do I create a brand for my private GP practice?

Defining your brand

Defining your brand should sit with the lead practitioner, partners or shareholders and help can be provided by branding and design agencies. When defining your brand you should consider:

Why do I need a brand?

A brand helps you to convey the sort of practice you want to be, stand out from competitors and attract patients.

Historically patients within the NHS have not had great freedom to switch their registration between GP practices. This has meant that branding has played a limited role for NHS GP practices.

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Values

Within the private sector your brand will convey the attributes that your practice chooses to prioritise.

Values vary, but could include values such as a personalised service, low cost, premium, customised or high-quality care.

These values will be key in customer decisions to consider and use your service and they can drive your business forwards.

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Accessibility

Don't overlook accessibility. The NHS brand toolkit, and the CQC, place high value on accessibility, and it is your responsibility to ensure that  anyone seeking to access care from a particuar provider is able to.

Within a private context, the responsibility to deliver care to all is not in place, but within a healthcare context, you should review accessibility standards.

Creating a brand

To create a brand, you should first identify what values you want to stand for. This can typically be done either by the lead practitioner, the lead partners, or the shareholders, depending on the practice’s structure.

There are branding agencies that can assist you through the process.  

Once values have been defined, these can be translated into a brand identity kit by a graphic designer or a design agency.

With your brand identity kit, you will have a name (if this has not already been defined), a set of logos and a colour scheme for your website and any physical branding - and this will form the basis for all your customer interactions.

Once you have a clearly defined brand, it will be much easier to market your services, gain trust from patients and build your practice.