Electronic transfer of applicants' medical reports will remove underwriting delay
Scottish Equitable Protect has forecast that within the next two to three years, general practitioners (GPs) will be able to transfer patients' medical records to insurance companies electronically.
As a result GPs will no longer have to spend time writing reports, which should drastically speed up the underwriting process.
Speaking at the Cover Forum in Manchester, Mark Preston, underwriting manager at Scottish Equitable Protect, talked about insurers' liaison with the NHS and software suppliers.
'A number of insurers have got together with the NHS and are looking at ways of accessing records. The Government has an objective of converting paper records into an electronic format and the insurers are looking at ways of accessing these records in lieu of GP reports.'
'I don't think every report will be electronic, but in two to three years we may be able to access these records. Insurers will ask the GP to authorise the sign off, sending the records off electronically, rather than completing a report.'
Graham Spittles, chief underwriter at Royal SunAlliance, is in favour of the initiative, but thinks change is still a long way off.
He said: 'I think it would be great if this was achievable within this time frame, but I think three years is a little optimistic. It will happen and when it does, it will release GPs from the time-consuming work of completing reports manually for insurers and other companies. It will also enable insurers to make decisions a sight quicker than at present.'
The systems for insurers to access these records are not yet in place. But their implementation is not all down to the NHS. Reliance on the NHS having to buy specific software to put the system in place was reduced by insurers liaising with software writers.
Matt Rann, head of underwriting and claims at Scottish Equitable, is on the steering group dealing with the NHS and IT suppliers.
'While the NHS met and pulled itself together we, the insurance steering group, have spoken to all the suppliers of the software. So rather than this costing the GPs or the NHS, the software suppliers have already added this as an extra tool that GPs can access. This was possible because we got in there early and they added the extra functionality for no additional cost,' he said.
Rann added: 'The founding group consisted of eight insurers. We want to get the industry to buy in to this and we are open with information. Anybody in the insurance industry is welcome to come along to our meetings. This is not a club ' what we needed to do was get an initial body of interest to drive the whole thing forward, and overcome initial scepticism.'
