Private healthcare still relevant: National Friendly

With the UK health service in high demand and with many private hospitals being taken under the wing of the NHS to offer increased treatment space for Covid-19 cases, life in the private healthcare sector is far from normal.

The scale of the problem is highlighted in a report prepared by Laing Buisson before the COVID-19 outbreak. The report claims that more than 660,000 patients had already waited beyond the NHS’s 18-week waiting time target for non-urgent surgery.

National Friendly believes private health insurance can still play a role in the treatment of many short-term, curable conditions. The current situation is a cause for concern and many believe it will now get worse, as hospitals address all the missed operations and appointments that have accrued during the COVID-19 crisis.

Private hospitals are now changing their messaging to reflect that they are open for new referrals and are offering online consultations to patients, offering tests, diagnosis and face to face consultations to those deemed most in need.

It’s easy to make the mistake of thinking of in-patient treatment only when considering private medical insurance. For some, out-patient policies hold a different appeal. In fact, it is the out-patient cover facilities, which mean policyholders can still see a specialist, gain a timely diagnosis and get on an NHS waiting list sooner, where the value of these policies lie.

How private medical insurance can help policyholders with future pandemics like COVID-19 remains to be seen. It will be interesting to see whether the next generation of PMI policies will want to try to add value and offer cover more tailored to future pandemic outbreaks, both as part of a testing and treatment programme.  The difficulty for insurers is in assessing the potential scale and cost of any new outbreak.