Types Of Private Medical Policy

What is Private Medical Insurance
Private Medical Insurance is designed to cover the costs of private medical treatment for curable short-term illness or injury (commonly known as acute conditions). Most people buy this type of insurance to gain the reassurance of knowing that treatment is available promptly, if they become ill or are injured.

As a private patient you can bypass the NHS waiting lists, choose when treatment will take place, choose the specialist who treats you and choose the hospital. You will have the privacy of your own en-suite room with TV, home comforts and a full a la carte menu. Imagine it as a hotel environment with access to the best consultants, anaesthetists, surgeons and nurses who are there to provide you with 'one to one care' and their goal is to make your stay as pleasurable as possible whilst making you better.

In-patient and Day-patient (comes as standard)
When you are admitted to a private hospital, everything that takes place from, accommodation, meals, nurses, drugs, specialist and consultant visits, diagnostic tests including CT, X-Rays, MRI and PET Scans, anaesthetists, operations, radiotherapy & chemotherapy, physiotherapy and after care is covered in full by the leading insurance companies, this means that every bill raised by your stay is paid for.

In-patient and day-patient basically means that you use a hospital bed, if you stay over night you are an in-patient. If you use a bed perhaps to recover from an invasive diagnostic test (but come home a few hours later) then you are classed as a day-patient.

Whatever Private Medical Insurance policy you decide to go with, they all fundamentally offer the same level of cover for in-patient and day-patient.

Out-patient (lower the benefits to lower the price)
Now, the way that prices for Private Medical Insurance differ is down to the level of out-patient benefits you may require.

Out-patient is the part where a specialist or consultant will try to figure out what is wrong with you before you are admitted into hospital for treatment. Any out-patient treatment will also take place within a private hospital but you will probably only be there for an hour or so, you literally go there and then come out, hence the terminology out-patient.

On the most comprehensive policies all of your out-patient consultations with specialists and diagnostic tests are covered in full, there are basically no limits. This level of cover will of course be reflected in your premiums and is the most expensive type of private medical insurance.

You can of course reduce the level of out-patient benefits and therefore reduce your premiums. All of the insurance companies have different levels and prices for out-patient benefits. Some will pay specified amounts towards out-patient consultations with specialists and diagnostic tests, others will pay for the fist few visits to see an out-patient specialist, others will only pay for certain types of diagnostic scans and some policies have financial limits on out-patient treatment such as physiotherapy, osteopathy and chiropractic.