With NHS Wait Lists Increasing, New Site Makes Private Care More Accessible

As demand for private healthcare services has grown rapidly during the COVID-19 outbreak, a new digital platform is making it easier than ever to identify suitable health insurance policies that can make private care more affordable. Healthplan is an innovative price comparison website dedicated to helping individuals, couples, and families find the right policy for them.

According to HCA Healthcare, a private healthcare network which operates eight high profile hospitals across the UK including The Portland Hospital, states that the number of ‘self-pay’ procedures has doubled during lockdown, highlighting just how rapidly demand for private healthcare has risen.

Launched in April 2020, Healthplan aims to make finding affordable private medical insurance easier and more straightforward, offering more than 100 different insurance policies and comparing quotes from leading providers such as Bupa, Vitality, Axa, and Aviva, Freedom Health Insurance, and The Exeter. Through the platform, users can find basic, medium and comprehensive packages, with services ranging from private GP appointments to mental health cover and full day patient treatments.

Roman Danaev, Healthplan CEO said, “With queues for NHS treatment now longer than ever, we’re seeing an increasing number of people turning to private healthcare, and for many of these people finding the right health insurance can really help to make private treatment more affordable, especially during this period of uncertainty. In cases where patients are not seeking urgent treatment for a pre-existing medical condition, private medical insurance is emerging as one of the most cost effective ways to ensure that necessary care is received during the chaos of the pandemic.”

The new price comparison website comes at a time when the COVID-19 outbreak is making it challenging to book GP appointments, and when necessary treatments and procedures are being postponed. The British Medical Association reports that more than one million operations – including 20,000 cancer treatments – were cancelled between April and June as a direct result of the pandemic, resulting in ever-growing NHS waiting lists.

One of the primary reasons for choosing private healthcare prior to the pandemic was wait times. GlobalData’s Insurance Consumer Survey shows that 15% chose private care due to NHS wait times in 2018, rising to 29% just one year later. And while figures for 2020 have not yet been published, it can be expected that wait times will have sparked even more interest in private healthcare this year, with the NHS Confederation predicting the overall waitlist to reach 10 million by Christmas, up from 4.2 million at the start of the year.

A report published in The Lancet Journal of Oncology estimates that the pandemic will result in an additional 9.6% increase in breast cancer deaths, a 16.6% rise in deaths from lung cancer, and a 6% increase in oesophageal cancer deaths. This is in line with a trend noted by Healthplan for greater interest in policies that include advanced cancer cover. Other growing areas of interest are 24/7 private GP access, and in-patient and day-patient treatments, which Healthplan notes have more than doubled since April.

To find out more about Healthplan, visit http://www.health-plan.co.uk