Many people are surprised we don’t accept private health insurance. We used to, but we learnt the hard way it wasn’t financially viable for a small practice, or conducive to offering the quality of care we believe in.
Here’s why.
Reclaiming fees from health insurance companies takes time, admin and persistence. Most payments will take a minimum of 2 to 4 weeks to process, but they will often need to be submitted more than once. In some cases it’s taken us over a year to get the money. This requires administrative resources that we just don’t have.
Now, that may seem like a good thing from a patient’s point of view, but most insurance companies pay between £35 and £50 per session for physiotherapy. That’s significantly less than a personal trainer or most beauty therapy treatments. There’s no time limit on that session, and no minimum standards for what a session should include. So whether you’re treated for 15 minutes or for an hour, the physiotherapist (or the company they work for) gets paid the same amount. And under some health insurance contracts, we’re not allowed to charge any top-up fees.
Quality care costs more than that. Our costs for premises, insurance, equipment, admin, marketing and on-going training can’t stretch to this, unless we stick to very short appointments.
As experienced physios, having the freedom to provide the best care we can, matters to us. Our sessions are an hour-long for a reason. In each session, we want to have the time to assess you properly, provide hands-on therapy, share knowledge about your treatment, and ensure you’re doing rehabilitation exercises correctly. We can’t afford to do it at health insurance rates.
Health insurance companies not only dictate rates, they also dictate the number of rehabilitation sessions required. This is often based on a referral letter from your GP, without any physical assessment. If you need more than the agreed number of sessions, it can take months to get further sessions approved by your insurer, creating a damaging break in treatment.
Which leads to the final point…
No health insurance pays for unlimited physiotherapy. Even if they say they do. Once they deem you’ve had sufficient physiotherapy for what they perceive the injury to be, they will stop payments. This is usually with little or no notice, sometimes leaving the physiotherapist out of pocket, and the patient without the continued care they need.
From our point of view – no. We won’t be accepting payments via health insurers in the future.
But as someone who has health insurance you may have the option to exclude physiotherapy from your insurance and lower your premiums. Or, if your physiotherapy has been authorised, you can also put in a claim directly with your insurance company. They may reimburse you in part for the upfront fees you’ve paid.