PruHealth health insurance review

The Prudential Group is a global insurance provider, with a large presence across the world. In the US, Asia and the UK they have helped millions of customers with their Life Insurance, pension and private health products. That being the case, what does their PruHealth Private Health Insurance cover?

What Does PruHealth private healthcare insurance cover?

PruHealth offers a single health insurance policy that provides comprehensive cover to its policyholders. This looks to cover the cost of private medical treatment for a number of conditions for UK residents. It gives you most of the coverages you’d expect from a leading health insurer such as Prudential, and in certain areas gives access to the highest standards of care and treatment available in the private medical sector.

You are covered for a wide range of acute conditions and treatments, and have benefit of both inpatient care, outpatient care and other additional treatment:

Inpatient Care Includes:

• hospital charges
• Fees charged by PruHealth-agreed consultants, including surgeon, anaesthetist and physician fees
• Inpatient Cancer treatment (such as surgery)
• Inpatient psychiatric treatment

Outpatient Care Includes:

• Consultations with PruHealth-agreed consultants
• Diagnostic scans such as CT, MRA and PET scans. For PruHealth coverage, this is only on the basis of GP referral, and restricted to the policyholder’s selected hospital list. There is a restriction that one must be wary of too, which is if you take a scan outside of your selected hospital list, you will have to pay 40% of the scan fee yourself.
• Other diagnostic tests are included here, such as X-rays, pathology, and ECG
• Physiotherapy, chiropractic and osteopathy is covered too, but only for a certain number of sessions, and is thus not unlimited.
• Outpatient cancer treatment (such as radiotherapy or chemotherapy)
• Outpatient psychiatric treatment

Additional Care Available

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There are additional costs and benefits that PruHealth provides, that aren’t necessarily offered from other insurance providers:

• Childbirth cash benefit
• Home-Nursing
• Private Ambulance
• Parental accommodation (for when your child has an overnight stay at the hospital)
• NHS hospital cash benefit (when you elect to have NHS treatment which might otherwise be covered under your PruHealth policy)
• Some complementary and alternative therapies. These therapies are ones not presently considered a part of conventional medicine, and must be referred by a GP or specialist.

What is Not Covered?

The exclusions that PruHealth attaches to their policy terms and conditions are not dissimilar from what you might usually expect of a leading healthcare insurance provider. The conditions not covered include:

• day-to-day monitoring or treatment of most chronic conditions (such as diabetes or asthma)
• Medical treatment as a result of self-inflicted injuries
• Cosmetic treatment
• Pregnancy and childbirth
• Treatment for obesity
• Deafness

In addition to these standard exclusions, PruHealth does not provide costs for overseas treatment. Of course this is largely excluded by most other providers, but they will usually allow you to include it in your cover for an additional cost. There is no such option for PruHealth. There is no cover for routine check-ups either – again this is largely excluded across the healthcare insurance board, but others will offer a cash-back service instead, meaning you can benefit from your policy when you’re just looking after your own medical health. There is no NHS cash-back product offered by PruHealth.

The Vitality Programme

PruHealth also offers a distinctive healthcare policy with their Vitality programme. Here, you can benefit from a healthier lifestyle, both in terms of your overall wellbeing and access to lifestyle rewards and discounts. So, if you eat well, take some exercise and essentially maintain a healthier lifestyle, you can access Pru’s reward partners as well as see a reduction in your renewal premium.

There are four statuses: Bronze, Silver, Gold and Platinum. Your status is determined by the recorded efforts you make with PruHealth during the policy year, by engaging in a wide selection of health-promoting activities. You will be rewarded points which move you through different statuses – the higher statuses entitle members to higher value rewards. We like this programme since whilst it does help the insurance provider by trying to reduce the likelihood of claims made from their members, not only does it keep you premium costs down (less claims mean lower premiums), but it also promotes your health and wellbeing. Health is wealth!

Conclusion

PruHealth offers a standard healthcare package that looks to be a one-size-fits-all approach. It might help you more if you are purchasing a healthcare insurance policy out of an abundance of caution, but without specific needs or custom conditions more applicable to yourself than anyone else. Aside from its Vitality Programme, it does not offer anything above and beyond other insurance policies, however, you will get value for money in your premium outlay, and have confidence that you will be covered for most eventualities.