Medical Insurance Causes Pain

Written by LiveLink
September 23rd 2023

Medical Insurance Causes Pain

Private medical insurance is a great thing to have. It helps people to get the help they need, when they need it.

It can be a double-edged sword for the practioner.

Yes, it can fill clinic gaps but at what cost.

It’s rare that the insurance fee will be the same as the usual appointment fee. In some cases it’s considerably less.

Not only is the fee less than the clinics advertised fee schedule, it’s an absolute pain claiming it from the insurer.

We often suggest to the clinics that we support that if they are going to take insurance payments, then to ask the patient or client to book the appointment and then to claim the payment themselves.

This does go against most things I say about delighting your patient. But, the clinic already has a reduced income from the insurance payment AND then has to wait for the payment to be deposited into their account. AND has to deal with a considerable amount of admin to claim the payment.

Is it worth it? To fill gaps definitely but there is always a payback and that’s the time spent to claim the monies.

This morning we had a telephone call from a patient that was trying to deal with their insurance company. She was very unhappy as she was being sent from pillar to post and was getting absolutely nowhere. So the patients are also going through similar pain.

It appears that there are times when private health insurers are not serving anyone. And it’s probably not going to improve anytime soon and with NHS waits getting increasingly longer, reliance on private healthcare insurance is likely to increase.