Meet your Healthcare Partner
Frank Coelho is a Senior Healthcare Partner with the WPA Healthcare Practice. He is a qualified chartered accountant (ACA) and the owner and director of Private Medical Associates Limited.
Private Medical Associates Limited is an Appointed Representative of the WPA Healthcare Practice plc, a wholly owned subsidiary of WPA.
We advise on Private Medical Insurance products from WPA for individuals, families and businesses of all sizes.
My Approach
Benefits and considerations
It’s never been more important to consider Private Medical Insurance (PMI) for yourself, your family or your business. Key benefits include:
- An alternative: PMI facilitates your access to the Private Medical Sector meaning that you are no longer dependent on when and if the NHS can you treat you and your family, in other words, you have a choice and you have options. It also assists the NHS indirectly by reducing your dependence on it.
- Choice: PMI gives you options and therefore choices. It gives you control over when, where and by whom you and your family are treated. No longer are you obligated/forced to use providers allocated to you via your postcode. With WPA you can use the provider * or hospital of your choice. * Subject to WPA’s recognition criteria
- Speed: PMI facilitates rapid access to treatment when convenient for you. Health insurance and private healthcare is not simply about “skipping the queue”. Faster treatment could directly impact how quickly and how well you recover. As an example, spotting cancer early increases the chances of survival. Diagnosing cancer before it has the chance to spread too far means that treatment is more likely to be successful – Source: Cancer research UK
- Access: PMI can give you access to treatment that is not available to you on the NHS. One of the most important examples is Targeted Cancer Therapy which is often extremely costly and therefore often not available to patients on the NHS. As an example it is possible that two patients with similar illnesses to receive different levels of cover due to the Cancer Drugs Fund (CDF) simply because they live in different postcodes. This is often referred to as the ‘cancer postcode lottery’. CDF recommends certain drugs depending on their effectiveness and financial efficiency in line with NHS budgets. This means whilst one postcode may have access to a certain drug, another may not. PMI ensures that this risk is not one you need to be concerned about. Reference: https://www.moneysupermarket.com/health-insurance/treatments-unavailable-on-nhs/
An important consideration
Pre-existing and/or long-term conditions – As with all insurance products, WPA’s products are designed to cover conditions that could happen in the future and not necessarily conditions that have already occurred and/or currently exist including those that may be considered “long-term” i.e. conditions that are “managed” rather than curable. My goal is to ensure that you are aware of and understand any potential limits to your cover and would be glad to discuss any specific conditions/concerns that you may have in this regard.