Back pain, arthritis, gout and musculoskeletal injury.
Assessed and treated by a GMC-registered GP
Prescriptions, sick notes and referral letters included
A written treatment plan after every appointment
Your NHS records in the room, with your consent
Every condition below has its own page covering symptoms, causes, how it is diagnosed, whether it can be treated online, and when to seek urgent help.
Care led personally by Dr Khan
Attentive, unhurried care that listens properly
Five-star Google reviews from the people we have looked after
Registered with the Care Quality Commission
Musculoskeletal problems are the commonest reason people take time off work, and among the most under-investigated. Most settle; the ones that don't often need imaging that a GP referral unlocks.
We can also arrange bone density scanning, which matters more than people realise after menopause or long-term steroid use.
This is the category where not being able to examine you matters most. Musculoskeletal assessment relies on movement, palpation and specific tests, and no video call substitutes for a pair of hands.
What we can do honestly:
Opioids — not remotely, under any circumstances. They work poorly for most musculoskeletal pain, particularly chronic pain, and the harms accumulate. If that is what you are looking for, please do not book: the answer will be no.
Physiotherapy. Most areas now allow self-referral to NHS musculoskeletal physiotherapy without seeing a GP first — look up your local service. For back pain, neck pain, shoulders, knees and most soft-tissue problems, it outperforms almost everything else available.
NHS "first contact physiotherapists" now sit in many GP practices, and you can often book directly.
Diet is not the main lever, and the moralising around gout is both unfair and unhelpful. Alcohol — particularly beer — and fructose from sugary drinks matter more than red meat, and diuretics for blood pressure are a very common contributor that is frequently switchable.
Kept below target urate for long enough, crystal deposits dissolve and attacks stop altogether. Gout is one of the few conditions treatment effectively resolves.
Vitamin D 10 micrograms daily between October and March for everyone in the UK. Weight-bearing and resistance exercise, which builds bone in a way nothing else does. Stopping smoking and reducing alcohol.
Anyone on long-term steroids should have had a bone protection conversation — and many have not.
Glucosamine and chondroitin, whose evidence does not support the cost. Copper bracelets, magnetic supports and "joint formulas". Private MRI before a physiotherapy assessment, which frequently finds incidental changes and leads to unnecessary worry. And expensive orthotics before trying the free advice.
Partly, and we should be honest about the limit. What a remote consultation does well is screen for the serious causes, arrange imaging, and direct you to physiotherapy — which is the treatment that actually works.
What it cannot do is examine you, and for musculoskeletal problems that is a real limitation rather than a technicality.
Learn these, because they are the ones that matter.
Cauda equina — A&E immediately: numbness around the back passage, genitals or inner thighs; difficulty passing urine or losing control of bladder or bowel; weakness in both legs.
Also urgent: back pain with fever, unexplained weight loss, night pain that wakes you, significant trauma, or a history of cancer.
No — and this is the most useful correction here. Bed rest makes back pain worse. Keeping moving, and staying at work with adjustments where possible, produces better outcomes.
It feels wrong and the evidence is consistent.
Usually not, and early scanning can actively mislead. Disc bulges and degenerative changes are found in large numbers of people with no pain at all — seeing them on a report frequently causes more distress than the pain did.
Scanning is warranted with red flags, persistent symptoms after adequate treatment, or progressive neurological signs. We can arrange it.
In most areas you can self-refer to NHS musculoskeletal physiotherapy without seeing a GP at all. Look up your local service — it is free, and it is the treatment with the best evidence for most of this.
Many GP practices also have a first contact physiotherapist you can book directly.
Almost always a dose problem rather than a drug failure.
Allopurinol must be titrated against a target urate — usually below 360 µmol/L — and a great many people are left on the starting dose indefinitely and never rechecked.
Ask what your urate level is. If nobody has measured it since you started, that is your answer.
It may well still be gout. Uric acid is frequently normal or even low during an attack, and a normal level then does not exclude it.
It needs retesting a few weeks after things settle.
The distinction matters more than almost anything else here.
Osteoarthritis — pain worse with use, stiffness lasting minutes in the morning, no significant swelling.
Inflammatory arthritis — morning stiffness lasting more than 30 minutes, swollen joints, often symmetrical, sometimes with fatigue. This needs rheumatology, and early referral genuinely changes long-term joint damage.
Worth discussing after a fracture from a minor fall, after an early menopause, with long-term steroid use, or with a strong family history.
Osteoporosis is silent until something breaks, and it is substantially under-treated — particularly in women after the menopause and in men, in whom it is barely considered.
Not opioids — not remotely, under any circumstances. They work poorly for most musculoskeletal pain and particularly badly for chronic pain, while the harms accumulate.
What works better is movement, physiotherapy, and treating the specific problem — which is less satisfying to hear and more likely to help.
Clinically reviewed by Dr Mohammad Zubair Khan, GMC 7563469
Last reviewed
August 29, 2026
On this page
Ongoing
Time to be seen
Appointment length
Your NHS record in the room
Written treatment plan
Told when a test isn’t needed
Cost
Same day, usually
20 minutes
Yes, with your consent
Included
Yes, and told why
£40 for 20 minutes
Varies by practice
Typically 10 minutes
Yes, your full record
Not routinely
Usually
Free
Same day
Often 10 to 15 minutes
Usually not
Sometimes charged
Varies by provider
Often a subscription
Same-day access is usually available, from 6am to 10pm, seven days a week. You choose a time that suits you rather than waiting on hold at 8am.
Yes. Care is led personally by Dr Mohammad Khan, so you are not passed between clinicians. Continuity is the point of a small practice: someone who knows your history and is listening attentively rather than working through a checklist.
Yes, with your consent. We can access your Summary Care Record during the consultation, so your current medications, allergies and significant history are in the room. That means fewer questions you have already answered elsewhere, and safer prescribing.
No. We are not here to replace GPs, only to support them. Your NHS practice remains responsible for your ongoing care, and with your consent we write to them after the consultation. We are useful when you need to be seen sooner, or want more time than a standard appointment allows.
Twenty unhurried minutes and a comprehensive assessment. A written treatment plan is included, along with any prescription, sick note or referral letter arising from the consultation, at no extra charge.
£40 for 20 minutes, self-pay. Membership is optional and never required. Priced for fairness, because we are not here to charge extortionate amounts for access to a doctor.
It means the diagnosis can usually be made from your history and photographs, and that treatment can be arranged safely without examining you. Where a condition is not marked treatable online, it is because examination is the diagnosis — listening to a chest, feeling an abdomen, examining an ear or a joint — or because a procedure or device is needed.
Yes, where there is a genuine bacterial infection — cellulitis, impetigo, bacterial urine infections, confirmed strep throat. We will also frequently tell you that you do not need one. Most sore throats, coughs, colds and earaches are viral, and an antibiotic gives you the side effects with none of the benefit.
If your problem turns out to be genuinely outside what we can do remotely, the doctor will tell you straight away, point you to the right service, and refund your fee in full. We would rather do that than fill twenty minutes to justify the charge.
Call 999 or go to A&E — do not book an online appointment and do not wait for a reply to an email. For urgent problems that are not emergencies, NHS 111 is available 24 hours a day, online or by phone, and can direct you to the right service.
Patient reviews
