The short answer
Four steps. A 30-second eligibility check; a medical-history form you fill out with your specialist’s office, with your GP kept in the loop only if you consent; a consultation with a doctor on the GMC’s Specialist Register; and, if it’s clinically appropriate, a prescription dispensed through a partner pharmacy and posted to you discreetly. No referral. No waiting list. Your first consultation is complimentary.
Eligibility check → medical history → specialist consultation → prescription posted to your door. The whole process typically takes one to two weeks from first form to first dispense.
Step 1 — The 30-second eligibility check
You start with a short online form. The aim is to confirm that you’re a candidate for a specialist consultation — not to decide whether you’ll be prescribed anything. The bar is set by the UK legal framework: medical cannabis can only be prescribed on a named-patient basis, by a GMC-registered specialist, when conventional treatments haven’t given lasting relief.
The form asks about the condition you’re seeking treatment for, what you’ve already tried, and how those treatments have worked. It’s deliberately brief.
If you’re clearly eligible — most people who’ve completed two or more conventional treatment pathways without lasting relief are — you’ll move to Step 2. If you’re not, you’ll get a plain-English explanation of why, with a suggestion of what might serve you better.
Step 2 — Medical history, with your consent
The next step is sharing your medical history. There are two ways to do this. You can write it out yourself, including treatments tried and their effects, and we’ll work from that. Or, more thoroughly, you can give us written consent to request your records from your GP under UK GDPR.
The second route takes a few days longer but gives the specialist a complete picture. It also means we can write back to your GP after the consultation if you want them kept informed — something the GMC encourages for continuity of care.
You don’t need a GP referral to access medical cannabis privately. But joined-up care across your GP and your specialist is meaningfully safer, and it’s the route most patients choose.
Step 3 — The specialist consultation
The consultation lasts around thirty minutes and is conducted online via video. You’ll speak with a specialist on the GMC’s Specialist Register — a pain medicine consultant, psychiatrist, neurologist, or gastroenterologist, depending on the condition. Which specialist sees you is matched to your condition.
The specialist will go through your history with you, ask about the treatments that haven’t worked and why, discuss what daily life looks like, and explain what a treatment plan with cannabis-based medicines might involve — including any clinical reasons it might not be the right pathway for you.
It’s a clinical conversation, not a sales call. Around one in ten patients leave a UK consultation without a prescription because the specialist judges it’s not the right fit — and that’s exactly how the framework is supposed to work.
A specialist consultation is a clinical conversation. Not a sales call. Not a tick-box.
Step 4 — The prescription, dispensed and posted
If the specialist judges medical cannabis is clinically appropriate, they’ll write you a private prescription. It’s sent to a partner pharmacy — in our case, Blenheim Pharmacy — which holds the Home Office licence required to dispense controlled drugs in this category.
The pharmacy contacts you to arrange payment for the medication itself (separate from the consultation fee) and posts the prescription to your home address in discreet, unbranded packaging. Typical fulfilment is within five working days, occasionally up to seven for prescriptions written by a consultant.
How long the whole thing takes
Most patients move from initial eligibility check to first dispense in one to two weeks. The variable is your medical records: if you ask us to request them from your GP, allow up to ten working days. If you provide your own written summary, the consultation can usually be booked within three to five working days.
What it costs (in brief)
Your first consultation at Xen Health is complimentary. Follow-up consultations and prescriptions are charged transparently — pricing is shared in writing before any appointment is booked. We’ve written a fuller breakdown in the cost guide.
How Xen Health fits in
We’re the UK chapter of Nectar Tek Australia — a family of doctor-led clinics for patients whose conditions haven’t responded to conventional care. Every consultation is led by a specialist on the GMC’s Specialist Register. Your first consultation is complimentary.
This article is for general information. It is not medical advice and is not a substitute for a consultation with a qualified specialist. Whether medical cannabis is appropriate for any individual is a clinical decision that rests with the prescribing doctor on the basis of medical history and a full assessment.