Your insurer fee rates have not moved in years

Insurer contracts are signed and not revisited Consultants are unaware that rates are negotiable or how to approach a negotiation There is no benchmark data available to consultants to compare their rates

• Insurer fee schedules are treated as set rather than negotiable
• Consultants have no access to benchmark data for their specialty and geography
• There is no professional support available for fee negotiation
• Insurers are not proactive in offering rate increases
• Consultants are unaware that peers in the same specialty are being paid more

A 15% fee increase on £120,000 of annual PMI revenue generates an additional £18,000 per year without seeing a single additional patient.

• Real-terms income declines year on year as costs rise against static fees
• Revenue growth depends entirely on volume rather than rate improvement
• The consultant is unaware of the size of the gap between their rate and the market
• Opportunity to recover lost real-terms income is missed with every year of inaction
• Inequity with higher-paid peers in the same specialty compounds over time

What it looks like in practice

• A consultant on an unchanged Bupa fee schedule for seven years is likely being paid 15 to 25% below the rate available to peers who have negotiated, a gap worth £18,000 to £30,000 annually on a £120,000 PMI base
• Requesting a current fee schedule from each insurer and comparing it to published rates and peer benchmarks for the same specialty (for example PHIN where available) takes less than a day and establishes the size of the gap before any negotiation begins
• Insurers typically accept a rate negotiation request most readily at contract renewal or in Q1 when budget allocations are being set, timing the approach increases the probability of a positive outcome