It sounds like a contradiction.
If you have chosen an excellent surgeon and an excellent hospital, why would you need insurance against complications?
The answer is that quality reduces risk. It doesn’t eliminate it.
Hip and knee replacements are established, highly successful procedures. Yet recognised complications include infection, blood clots, dislocation following hip replacement and, in some cases, the need for further surgery.
That does not necessarily mean anything has gone wrong with the standard of care.
Medicine involves human biology, and patients do not all respond to treatment in exactly the same way.
A useful comparison is aviation.
You want the best possible aircraft, highly trained pilots and rigorous safety procedures. None of those precautions make emergency planning unnecessary.
Healthcare is similar.
Arthur believes two ideas can comfortably coexist:
Patients should seek outstanding clinical outcomes.
And:
Patients should have a safety net if they are unlucky enough to experience a complication anyway.
This is particularly important for self-paying patients.
When an insurance company funds an operation, there is already an organisation standing between the patient and many of the financial consequences of treatment.
When patients fund surgery themselves, they take on more of that financial exposure personally.
Arthur changes that equation.
At participating hospitals, complication insurance can be incorporated directly into eligible surgical packages. Patients therefore receive the benefit of private self-funded treatment while retaining protection against covered no-fault complications for 365 days.
The objective isn’t to make patients frightened of surgery.
Quite the opposite.
It is to allow them to make the decision with greater confidence.
Choose the hospital carefully.
Choose the surgeon carefully.
Understand the expected outcome.
Understand the risks.
And know that if you happen to be the exception rather than the rule, there is a plan.
