Secondo
Private practice without building a second business.
An early-stage venture by Sami Khoury.
Secondo is an early-stage healthcare venture being developed to help NHS consultants undertake private work on a part time basis without having to build and manage an entire business around their clinical role.
Secondo is currently in the validation stage. I am working with consultants to understand the problem more deeply and test one of the most important parts of the proposed model: acquiring patients effectively and responsibly through digital means.
01
The problem
For many consultants, entering private practice is difficult to navigate, time-consuming, and expensive while balancing an already demanding NHS role. Before seeing a single patient, consultants often need to navigate business structures, indemnity, patient acquisition, and clinical operations.
Early conversations with ten consultants have reinforced this picture. Those looking to enter private practice most commonly cited patient acquisition and indemnity as barriers to getting started, while consultants already working privately identified secretarial support and fragmented clinical management systems as recurring operational challenges. One consultant who recently established a private clinic described spending around 10 months and £8,000 before seeing their first patient.
The expertise required to overcome these barriers is operational, not clinical. Secondo is being developed to provide that support.
02
The vision
The aim is to create a platform through which consultants can establish and operate a part-time private service hassle free.
Consultants would provide their clinical expertise and availability, while Secondo manages the non-clinical infrastructure needed to operate the service.
The complete model is being shaped through research and testing. The findings will help determine which services Secondo will provide and how the wider model will be structured.
03
The Founder
I am a healthcare strategy and operations professional with over a decade of experience across hospitals, NHS federation and digital health companies in the UK, Jordan and Italy.
My work has included leading hospital transformation programmes, implementing digital health solutions across NHS systems, developing new healthcare services and building partnerships between NHS and private-sector organisations. These experiences have shaped Secondo’s focus on solving the operational and commercial challenges surrounding clinical care, allowing consultants to concentrate on their patients.
Learn more about Sami’s background04
The pilot
The current validation project has two objectives:
Objective 1
Testing patient acquisition
Patient acquisition is at the core of the Secondo model. The project will design, fund, and test digital marketing campaigns focused on patient acquisition for a select number of consultants.
Objective 2
Understanding consultants' needs
Understanding consultants' needs is essential to building Secondo. The project will conduct structured interviews with consultants to identify the barriers to private practice, understand the administrative burden they face, and what services would provide the greatest value.
How the pilot will work
For participating consultants, Secondo will build their digital presence and design, fund, and manage targeted patient acquisition campaigns to drive private patient bookings.
The objective is to generate practical evidence about how patients find and acquire specialist care online.
Why participate?
For participating consultants, the pilot provides a risk free opportunity to generate private patient bookings with no upfront investment and without having to build or manage the marketing process themselves.
While outcomes will vary, the pilot is designed to test whether participating consultants can generate approximately 5–8 additional private patient bookings per month.
Participants will also have the opportunity to shape a service intended to address operational and administrative challenges of private sector work.
05
Who I'm looking to speak with
I would welcome conversations with:
- NHS consultants considering private practice
- Consultants who have established a private service
- Consultants interested in participating in an early patient-acquisition pilot
An initial conversation does not create any obligation to participate. Feedback alone would be valuable in helping ensure that Secondo is built around the practical needs of consultants.
Get involved
Help shape Secondo
If you have experience in establishing or operating a private practice, I would be interested to hear about the challenges you have encountered.
If you would like to learn more about the patient-acquisition pilot, we can explore whether it may be appropriate for your specialty and current private practice.