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Unique Consumer Medical Service Launches on the Web
Added: (Mon Nov 12 2001)
Brighton, England – 12th November 2001
Unique Consumer Medical Service Launches on the Web www.empoweredpatient.co.uk
Today sees the launch of empoweredpatient.co.uk - the first Internet site in the UK to provide healthcare consumers with the information they need to get themselves quickly to the very best medical treatment at the lowest cost. Uniquely, it reveals essential details on:
- The expertise of approximately 14,000 NHS and private consultant physicians and surgeons
- Over 600 medical subspecialties
- Over 1,000 hospitals where they work and
- Over 300 procedures
- Prices of over 75 self-pay medical procedures
It also lifts the lid on the world of private healthcare by, for the first time, disclosing publicly the average costs for over 75 typical procedures and operations in private hospitals.
Other key features of The Empowered Patient site include:
- Unique commendations on selected consultants, provided by their medical colleagues
- Consumer reviews and rating of all UK hospitals, by patients – both NHS and private
The effect of putting this information into the hands of - British healthcare consumers will be to empower them as never before. It heralds a new era of well informed patients - leading to better treatment - also to lower prices through greater competition for self-paying patients in private hospitals.
Tools for better decisions
Said Michael Miller, Managing Director of The Good Doctor Ltd, the company launching The Empowered Patient’s website, “our aim with empoweredpatient.co.uk is to create a future in which everyone has the tools to work with their GP to make better decisions about who to see and where to go for their specialist medical treatment”.
For people facing the need for treatment by a medical specialist, the most important of these are tools to help them decide:
- Which consultant physicians, surgeons and psychiatrists they should entrust with their treatments or ‘second opinions’
- What questions they should ask their specialist physician or surgeon
- In which hospital or other medical facility they should have their operations
- Their likely cost of treatment, should they decide to “go private”
Other tools for patients provided by this facility include concise information on the medical conditions that most commonly give rise to private treatments. For example, the site has detailed information on the types of specialists most appropriate for each condition and there are also many hundreds of external links to the most relevant – and mostly British - websites dealing with these.
First port of call
Miller added: “The key to getting the right treatment is to find yourself a consultant with the special expertise and interests relevant to your particular condition. Once you are under the care of the right specialists, the choice of hospital will fall naturally into place. For this reason, we think that people seeking private medical treatments should come to our website as their first port of call because we put the choice of consultant as our starting point.
We enable patients to help their GPs choose their consultants according to their sub-specialties, sub-sub-specialities and areas of special interest, wherever they may be in the UK. So for example, a woman with endometriosis can find her way to an experienced surgeon in that specialised field. However, for a consultant or hospital to be listed on our site is not in itself a recommendation. We are not in the business of ranking doctors. But, where we have positive comments from a number of their medical colleagues, we do note these. Users of our site can find ranking information about hospitals - but only because the government itself has recently provided an official star system for NHS acute hospital trusts. They can also find out about the current state of NHS waiting lists”.
Relationship with doctors
“Our information is already extremely useful for patients - and it will continue to improve over time. We know that some people and organisations on the ‘provider’ side of the fence will be defensive about our efforts. Maybe some will find minor errors and make a fuss. Instead, they should tell us quickly so that we can make corrections. But informed healthcare consumers are a help to doctors and hospitals - provided that they use their new knowledge in a non-threatening way and work with their GPs.”
The Empowered Patient’s services will be of greatest benefit to people with the ability to self-pay for private treatment. But others depending on the NHS will still find it extremely valuable to see who might be the appropriate consultants for their particular condition - and also what official inspectors and former patients say about the quality of service that they can expect from their local hospitals.
The current business model
The Empowered Patient aims to cover the costs of its Internet service by helping its customers to find lower cost alternatives to traditional private medical insurance plans. It wants to encourage people in Britain to look first to the NHS for a free medical service but then to consider self-paying for private treatment in the UK - or even abroad - if they cannot get what they need at the right time. To guard against their private medical costs getting out of hand, Miller also strongly advocates taking out cheap “high excess” (or “stop-loss”) private medical insurance.
Stop-loss medical insurance
The average private hospital treatment cost is around £4,000, This sum is affordable for a significant proportion of patients - many of whom spend as much on annual holidays. However, some would find it prudent to insure against the cost of self-pay treatments – such as heart surgery - that rise above this figure. Self-pay with a stop-loss is a good way to limit the amount that you may have to pay out to get high quality medical treatment quickly. The Empowered Patient will help arrange such cover through its special relationship with an independent insurance broking company – Essential Health Limited – with a unique range of very low cost plans from leading medical insurance companies.
[ENDS]
Contact: Michael Miller, CEO, “The Empowered Patient”
The Good Doctor Ltd, The Sussex Innovation Centre, Science Park Sq., Brighton, BN1 9SB
Telephone: 01273- 730605
Mobile: 0777 6203339
Fax: 01273- 746616
Website: www.empoweredpatient.co.uk
Email: info@empoweredpatient.co.uk
For: Essential Health Ltd
Paul Walker, CEO 01935 476667
Email: paulwalker@essentialhealthltd.com
The Good Doctor Ltd. is incorporated in England. Company number: 3632366. Registered office: 49 Sackville Gardens, Hove, East Sussex, BN3 4GJ.
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NOTES FOR EDITORS -KEY FACTS ABOUT THE UK PRIVATE MEDICAL SECTOR
Market size
1. The number of people in the UK paying for their own private operations has doubled over the past four years to 200,000 a year[1]each costing on average £4,000
2. Medical Insurers are paying for a further 600,000[2] inpatient private surgical procedures a year[3]
3. Revenues of independent hospitals and clinics in the UK (excluding NHS pay beds) reached an estimated £2,036 million in calendar 2000[4]
4. The amount of psychiatric care provided by the private sector increased by almost a third in 2000/20011
5. Medical consultants earned about £700m in private practice fees in the UK last year, when the NHS consultants’ pay cost £1.6 billion[5]
6. Out of a total of 26,000 medical consultants in the UK, around 16,000 of them work in the private sector as well as in the NHS
7. Men comprised 78 per cent of UK medical consultants last year. The proportion of ethnic minority consultants grew to 14.7 per cent of the workforce[6]
8. Every year over 10 million UK patients are referred by their GPs to consultants for the first time, of which 1.25 million go privately
9. Between 1990 and 2000 the number of individual private medical insurance (PMI) policies held in the UK fell more than 15% from 2.47 million to 2.09 million[7]
Factors fuelling the growth of ‘self-pay’
1. People’s expectations have been raised by the rapid progress of medical technology
2. In a wealthier, more consumer-orientated society, people are taking more control of their lives
3. They have the money to demand medical services when and where they want them
4. Increasingly people in Britain do not perceive traditional private medical insurance (PMI) as good value or appropriate3:
· Almost three quarters of adults feel that PMI is too expensive
· 58% of those who have private medical insurance also feel that PMI is too expensive
· The alternative to insurance-paid private healthcare, which is ‘self-pay’, is gaining around 20% per annum more customers every year
Segments of market growth
The UK market for self-pay surgery is divided between the following growth sectors:
1. The old - with a demand for immediate surgery on a short list of common procedures: hips; knees; cataracts; varicose veins; hernia repairs
2. The middle aged - often women - wanting immediate aesthetic surgery and related treatments
3. The critically ill - for whom it is literally a “matter of life or death” to get quickly to the very best medical advice and treatments
4. New younger markets - for example, for ‘Lasik’ laser eye surgery. This is now the most common form of elective surgery in America with around one million people signing up for it each year. In the UK the procedure costs around £750 an eye.
A better alternative to Private Medical Insurance
“The Empowered Patient” considers that there are three elements that together form a more effective way to plan for private medical treatments than traditional medical insurance. These are:
1. Savings (e.g. a tax-free ISA) of around £4,000 to act as the first call for paying for private health care treatments
2. ‘Stop- loss’ Insurance against medical treatment costs in excess of around £4,000
3. Expert and independent guidance as found at empoweredpatient.co.uk
The Empowered Patient’s contribution to addressing the UK’s health funding problem is to encourage an approach where people with the financial means and the wish, can more easily get quickly to the best medical treatments, by "self-paying" in the private sector. This contrasts with the private medical insurance (PMI) model that is in decline because it strikes most people as being poor value.
People aged over 60 have largely stopped buying PMI since tax relief for them was scrapped and Insurance Premium Tax imposed. However, very many of them do have sufficient savings to buy private medical treatment if and when they need it.
Instead of buying expensive PMI, healthcare consumers are coming to realise that they would benefit from (literally) saving their money and then - with the resulting cash nest-egg – buying private medical treatments if they choose, or need to because of NHS shortages. As a result the UK self-pay market has been growing at around 20% per annum over the past four years.
Benefits of empoweredpatient.co.uk
Healthcare consumers gain the following benefits from using The Empowered Patient’s website:
1. Greater access to medical excellence. By being able to find consultants:
a. By subspecialty and areas of their special interests
b. By peer group commendations
c. Not bound by just those available locally
d. Available to provide second or third opinions
2. Reduced anxiety. By being better informed about surgeons and physicians, necessary hospital features, and appropriate medical procedures
3. Speed. Where a patient is anxious for a medical opinion quickly, the system enables “ringing around” for the earliest appointment.
4. Lower prices. Because of both better informed buyers and health care providers competing for their business.
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FOOTNOTES
[1] Health Care Information Service’s (HCIS) Fitzhugh Directory of Independent Healthcare and Long-Term Care 2001 - 2002.
[2] http://www.iha.org.uk/main1.htm
[3] From information derived from the Independent Healthcare Association
[4] Laing and Buisson
[5] Laing and Buisson
6.Department of Health, 29th October 2001
[7] Laing and Buisson