On the Office of Fair Trading’s report on private
healthcare stating the “lack of access to information on quality and price for
consultants produces a situation where both the patient and insurer cannot differentiate
between consultant performance and fees in order to judge whether they
represent value for money” the Association of Medical Insurance Intermediaries
(AMII) makes the following comment:
“How do you measure quality and,
more importantly, should private medical insurers restrict a patient’s access
to higher quality because of price. At
the moment most insurers can only collect data around price. If insurers do have data about quality then
they should be willing to share that data with the customer – but how can an
insurer justify sending a customer to a particular consultant instead of one
that may have been recommended by the policyholder's GP without backing this up
with hard facts and figures? They could help the patient find a range of specialists
but GPs should be the ones that discuss this with the patient so the onus is on
private hospitals to have good relationships locally with their GPs.”
Private medical insurance news: 31 December 2011
