Healthcare in the UK is facing its biggest crisis in decades, not just with the NHS, but with the healthcare sector as a whole – and that will continue to hit insurance costs, Axa Health has warned.
“As my boss described it, the NHS is a whale and we are the minnow that flows behind that whale,” said Sarah Taylor, head of specialist and practitioner strategy at Axa Health.
“And when something happens to upset the NHS, we take the hit as well,” Taylor said while noting that with rising costs, it can no longer be about beating the insurer to get the lowest price.
“We are trying to do the right thing,” she continued.
“Its just the lowest price might not be as low as it used to be.”
Taylor was addressing delegates at the Association of Medical Insurers and Intermediaries (AMII) Spring Health and Wellbeing Summit and AGM yesterday.
Most serious health crisis
Taylor, who has worked in the healthcare sector for decades, said the current crisis is the most serious she has ever seen.
“In all my years in healthcare, we are facing a crisis that I’ve never seen before,” she said.
“Not only in terms of the supply of healthcare but also in terms of the requirements and the drive for more healthcare and more services with changing lifestyles in our population.
“The crisis was brewing prior to the pandemic. The pandemic has tipped us over the edge, and we are not going to recover anytime soon.“
Customer focused
Discussing the experience of patients visiting practitioners, she said: “We need to make sure that whatever we deliver is the right thing. It needs to be customer focused.”
But she noted that is not the case.
“You turn up to see a clinician at the convenience of the clinician. You do not turn up in a manner that suits you,” she added.
“We need to change that and make it customer focused.
“But its also got to be commercially sustainable. Its not just about shareholders or what we pay – its about the treatment we deliver adding real value.
“What is the point in having an MRI scan, however much it costs, if it doesn’t change the process of the treatment pathway?
”It’s a waste of money.
“I’m not going to pay extra for a robotic procedure if it does not deliver a material benefit to the patient.
“So these decisions are being taken for the right reasons.“
Posh NHS
Taylor also argued that healthcare has “frankly not adopted digital technology in any way shape or form, and really, what we’ve got in the private healthcare sector is a posh NHS,” Taylor said.
“Primary care is broken,” she said.
Increased costs, combined with less people wanting to go into private healthcare, will push up insurance costs, she warned.
“We have to reset in our minds about what the costs are going to have to be, because that’s the reality and we’ve got less people wanting to go into private healthcare,” she added.
“We’ve got more challenges.
“So we’ve all got to work together to see how we’re going to resolve that.”