PMI: Providers must reinvigorate market to stave off overseas competition
Providers need to reinvigorate the private medical insurance (PMI) sector to stave off the threat of overseas health care providers moving into the UK market, warned Mike Tremblay, senior partner at Tremblay Consulting.
Addressing delegates at the COVER Protection Forum, Tremblay discussed how changes in the NHS are dictating the way in which providers will have to work in the future. He stressed that new entrants to the market have had a successful start by offering low-cost policies and operating efficiently. "The new firms are like Easyjet; they will take new business far easier than existing firms," he said.
Tremblay also noted that investment in the NHS is starting to take effect as the service is beginning to address patient needs more effectively, a change that could spell trouble for providers. "The NHS is making it easier for patients to access quality-assured health services, which is all people want. The complexity of private products contrasts sharply with the relative simplicity of the public offering," he said.
Between improvements in the NHS and the new players in the market, it appears that long-established providers might be squeezed out. Tremblay claimed that the stagnant nature of the market was not solely down to circumstances beyond providers' control but essentially, to insurers' apathy.
"The private sector has been successful partly because the NHS has been poor at executing strategy and failed to meet public expectation. It has not needed to be a market leader or innovator as long as this legacy held," he said.
It now appears that providers must evolve to respond not only to the competition coming from new entrants but also to a better standard of treatment offered by the NHS.
Yet having advocated for providers to take the initiative, Trembley acknowledged that it will be up to patients to drive change. "They will make their decisions through the choice of the healthcare provision on offer and through the information they're given about that healthcare. Ultimately, the direction of state health policy, and consequently provider's policies, will be dictated by public satisfaction," he said.
