Bupa is also expanding its range of health support services and resources that customers can access from home
Image: Bupa to offer rebates to customers in response to coronavirus. (Credit: Unsplash/Fusion Medical Animation.)
UK insurance group Bupa announced it will pass on any exceptional financial benefit that will finally result from COVID-19 (coronavirus) to its health insurance customers in the country.
Bupa has made this move, as the country’s hospitals and staff are focusing their fight against coronavirus and the independent health sector is being disrupted.
While hospitals continue with urgent care such as cancer treatment, they are now postponing non-urgent hospital procedures to free up resources to fight the new pandemic.
Most treatments which are deferred will be delivered and funded as soon as possible later on and the health insurer is expecting an overall reduction.
Bupa is communicating to its customers to make this commitment. It has also pledged to commission a third-party review to ensure that its activity is fair and reasonable across its customers groups.
Bupa is expanding services to help customers access support from home
To support its customers through COVID-19 crisis, the company is also expanding its range of health support services and resources they can access from home.
The services include telephone and video consultation with nurses, general practitioners and consultants along with specialist help for physiotherapy and mental health, right through chemotherapy at home for cancer patients. It has already seen calls to its AnyTime HealthLine more than double.
Bupa is also offering the Digital GP service, which it runs in partnership with Babylon, to all insurance customers with a new COVID care assistant feature.
Bupa UK Insurance CEO Alex Perry said: “As an organisation without any shareholders our customers come first. At this point, no one can predict the full impact of this national crisis and we do not have all the answers yet.
“But we want to reassure our customers that we will do the right thing for them, and that any exceptional financial benefit ultimately arising from COVID-19 will be passed back to our health insurance customers. This will be by rebate or other appropriate means.”