Dr Damion Marmion urges all private healthcare players to unite around cost-effectiveness and quality
A chance to renew
There is a clear impetus for reform here. This new, modern generation of employers and individuals demanding better value, greater transparency and a sector that understands and changes to meet their needs presents us with a clear goal to strive for, with innumerable benefits.
The recent CMA investigation made a series of recommendations that may help to address some issues in the market, but we need to do more. It is vital that we cement our relevance to employers to turn what is clearly a great opportunity into a reality.
The sector is outdated, but it can renew. Bupa is calling for a clear, united vision and a commitment to change. It will require all stakeholders to listen closely and respond to customer feedback, and then to collaborate with each other to deliver better value for money and greater transparency on quality. Ultimately, this will attract more private healthcare customers – and keep them.
It’s clear that if insurers, hospital operators and privately practicing doctors work together on better developing and demonstrating the quality of care to patients, creating new services and delivering better value for money, the sector could go beyond recovery and from strength to strength.
A thriving private healthcare sector would not only bring benefits for patients, it could see consultants growing their private practices, hospital groups better utilising their excess capacity and more customers turning to health insurers and to private healthcare as a whole. It would also help ease pressure on the NHS and the wider UK health economy – we estimate that increased spending on private healthcare could see £1.1bn a year of NHS resources being freed up by 2025.
At Bupa we will continue to seek a price reduction of up to 15% or more from some major hospital providers for the benefit of already hard-pressed customers. To deliver what our patients and customers want, the sector needs to work together. I urge all parties in the private healthcare sector to focus on the needs of customers and patients and work together to drive momentum for change.
So, how can brokers play their part? By committing to a shared vision where everyone in the industry is an agent of change, and supporting providers’ drive to grow the private healthcare sector, with the benefits to customers foremost
in their minds.
Leading with a customer-centric approach will have a trickle-down effect, and the more we all listen and share our learning, the better prepared we are to make private healthcare accessible to more people.
As we look at developing new products and innovating to meet modern lifestyles, brokers can help us by providing input so that we can better understand what the customer really wants. They can also support our call for increased transparency (particularly around quality) and the publication of high-quality information for the benefit of customers.
Customer-facing stakeholders can be at the forefront of a new age of improved patient care. With their support, as we call for lower costs from hospital providers, we can look forward to delivering better value and ultimately making private healthcare more affordable and sustainable for all.
Dr Damien Marmion is managing director of Bupa Health Funding
