For completeness, here is a list of the questions that you can expect William Russell to fire at you before they will pre-approve or reimburse. Simply, if you cannot answer the questions, you are forced pay for your treatment yourself or to go without the treatment you need.
\nIt’s ludicrously difficult to answer their questions without a full set of medical records obtained from every doctor you have ever seen, in every country, complete with details of the doctor’s specialisations, dates, address, exact descriptions of every little injury or illness, exact descriptions of any medicine prescribed, results from any tests taken and of course details of every medical insurance policy you have ever taken out! Hardly practical (or even the realistically possible) for people who live, work and travel abroad. This is a direct transcript taken from the form I was sent in Bangkok:<\/p>\n
\n
Have you ever suffered from or required any investigations, treatment or medical advice for skin conditions in the past (Yes \/ No checkboxes)
\nIf YES, please give full details including dates and the name and address of any doctors you have consulted:<\/p>\n
Please also detail the medication prescribed and the date first administered.<\/p>\n
Have you ever suffered from any other medical condition or injury in the past? (Yes \/ No checkboxes)<\/p>\n
If YES please give full details including dates and the name and address of any doctors you have consulted.<\/p>\n
Have you had any repeat prescriptions in the past? (Yes \/ No checkboxes)
\nIf YES, please give full details including dates and the name and address of the doctor(s) who prescribed the medication:<\/p>\n
Have you had any routine preventative health checks \/ test in the past (Yes \/ No checkboxes)
\nIf YES, please give full details including dates, the type of tests, the results and the name and address of the doctors who performed the tests:<\/p>\n
Please list all doctors that you have consulted in the last five years, and their specialism:<\/p>\n
Name of Doctor
\nSpecialism
\nDate Consulted
\nReason Consulted<\/p>\n
Do you have any other insurance cover? (Yes \/ No checkboxes)
\nIf YES, please provide the full details of the insurance company and your policy number:<\/p>\n
Are you entitled to benefits under any state-funded medical care scheme and\/or do you hold a European Health Insurance Card (EHIC)? (Yes \/ No checkboxes)
\nIf YES, please provide the full details of the insurance company and your policy number:<\/p>\n
Please provide details of any previous health insurance cover you have held:
\nName
\nAddress
\nPolicy Number<\/p>\n
PLEASE CONTINUE ON A SEPARATE PIECE OF PAPER IF NECESSARY<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
what do you think?<\/h3>\n
Have you had trouble getting pre-approval from William Russell? Or conversely, have you actually been reimbursed by them after paying for treatment and subsequently making a claim? Am I alone in feeling ripped off by William Russell?<\/p>\n
If these questions are pertinent to any and all claims, shouldn’t companies like William Russell ask these questions initially, when the insurance is taken out, and not after the customer has become a patient?<\/p>\n
Since (in my opinion) this form is clearly just a tool of obstruction, do you think that companies like William Russell should be forced to justify to an independent body such as the Financial Services Authority (FSA) as to why these questions are so necessary before authorising treatment, but not at all relevant at the time when the insurance is taken out?<\/p>\n
I’m really interested to hear about your experiences and opinions, as I fully intend to push this issue much, much further. Please feel free to add your comments below:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
September 2015: Update William Russell recently contacted me to tell me that they have updated the pre-authorisation forms in response […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":448,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,2,43],"tags":[7,91,89,97,10,4,6,95,96,90,3],"class_list":["post-1","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","category-life","category-medical","tag-cancer","tag-case","tag-due-dilligence","tag-experience","tag-health-insurance","tag-medical-insurance","tag-pre-approval","tag-research","tag-review","tag-story","tag-william-russell"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/davedub.co.uk\/davedub\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/davedub.co.uk\/davedub\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/davedub.co.uk\/davedub\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/davedub.co.uk\/davedub\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/davedub.co.uk\/davedub\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1"}],"version-history":[{"count":75,"href":"http:\/\/davedub.co.uk\/davedub\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":790,"href":"http:\/\/davedub.co.uk\/davedub\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1\/revisions\/790"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/davedub.co.uk\/davedub\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/davedub.co.uk\/davedub\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/davedub.co.uk\/davedub\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/davedub.co.uk\/davedub\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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