Personal health insurance in the UK is made to cover the costs of personal treatment for what are commonly known as acute conditions. The majority of the insurers in the UK define an acute condition as a disease, illness or injury that is likely to respond quickly to treatment which aims to return you to the state of health you were in immediately before suffering the disease, illness or injury, or which leads to your full recovery.

Many people buy this type of insurance to get the reassurance of knowing that treatment is available on time, if they become ill or are injured. As a private patient you can choose when treatment will take place, the expert who treats you and the hospital. You will generally have the privacy of an en-suite room complete with TV and other home comforts. Some illnesses and treatments will not be paid for and these are common to most policies. For instance the conditions you had before taking out the insurance (commonly known as pre-existing conditions), GP services, cover for long term illnesses that cannot be cured (chronic conditions) and accident and emergency admission. It is vital to note that private health insurance is not made to replace all the services of the NHS.

The type of policies and level of cover you can get normally come in 3 phases:

Budget

With this kind of policy usually only inpatient treatment is covered, this means that diagnostic tests, Consultant's fees and outpatient treatments are not covered. This type of policy best suits those who can afford to pay their own outpatient tests and consultants fees from savings leaving the policy to pay for the more expensive treatments such as operations

Standard

This kind of policy covers the full inpatient treatment such as operations and a range of outpatient treatments. Expert consultations and diagnostic procedures, including pathology, radiology computerised tomography, MRI Scans, radiotherapy and chemotherapy up to a limit of anything between £500 - £2000 depending on the insurer. Usually Therapies such as treatment by registered Osteopaths, Chiropractors, Physiotherapists, Homeopaths and Acupuncturists will also be covered again up to specified limits that vary between insurers.

Comprehensive

Comprehensive policies are very much on the top of the healthcare solutions. They usually include full inpatient cover, unlimited outpatient cover as described above, MRI, and CT scans and other benefits such as psychiatric cover, travel cover, dental cover, home nursing costs, chiropody, recuperative care and incidental hospital expenses (telephone calls, newspapers etc).