Advantages of Private Health Insurance
Private health insurance can offer you peace of mind and a better healthcare experience. Although you have to pay for cover, you are typically guaranteed faster treatment and greater patient choice. Unfortunately, the huge strain on NHS resources often prevents NHS services from offering the same standards of patient comfort as private hospitals.
Many people feel that private health insurance is an unnecessary expense when the NHS provides healthcare free of charge. However, most of us will purchase insurance for our homes and holidays knowing that we may never need to make a claim: peace of mind is a key factor in taking out any insurance, including a healthcare policy.
Unfortunately, there is good chance that all of us will fall ill in the future: some of us seriously. When you are diagnosed with a disease, you only want to concentrate on your recovery; waiting a long time for further tests or a major operation can put a huge strain on your system and affect your mental state. Many people feel that their quality of life suffers when they have to wait for treatment; private health insurance will typically entitle you to faster care. In some cases six month NHS waits for surgery can be reduced to two weeks with a private policy.
In addition to shorter waiting times, private health insurance has several other advantages. Most insurers offer a twenty-four hour health helpline, which you can call if you need advice on a health-related complaint. Insurers typically check the quality of their affiliated hospitals and any approved medical practitioners on a regular basis, to ensure that the standard of care promised to their policyholders is maintained. If you do need to go into hospital, private health insurance will normally entitle you to prompt care, and may enable you to choose where you receive treatment. Often you will have the same team of specialists and nurses caring for you throughout your stay in hospital. When in hospital you will usually be in a private room with en-suite bathroom facilities, your own television, telephone and buzzer in case you need assistance from the nursing staff; even the food in private hospitals is often said to be better than NHS catering.
There is some evidence to suggest that the spread of Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (commonly known as MRSA), a hard to treat infection which became prevalent in many UK hospitals, is reduced by private hospital care*. The spread of the bacterial infection might be reduced when patients are able to use en-suite facilities rather than share bathrooms. In addition, patients coming to private hospitals for a planned treatment may be less exposed to bacterial infections than patients being transferred between wards or hospitals, or those who receive emergency treatment.
Some people are concerned that private health insurance is elitist, and enables those with more money to receive better healthcare than poorer patients. In fact, there is reason to believe that private healthcare can work alongside the NHS to ensure that those people who are able to pay do not take up NHS hospital beds, speeding up the healthcare process for all and reducing the strain on NHS services.
* report published by Department of Health www.dh.gov.uk.
