Rebecca Dorrian, corporate consultant, Chase de Vere says her personal experience of cancer means that PMI is now always on the agenda when she speaks to corporate clients.
Everybody is aware of the record-high waiting lists within the NHS, and this has been a major catalyst in corporate advisers putting more focus on private medical insurance (PMI) in conversations with their clients. I’ve worked as a corporate adviser at Chase de Vere for the past 19 years, advising employers on the full range of employee benefits and running financial education sessions for employees, and this subject has particular relevance for me following a diagnosis for breast cancer last year.
Even though I have a family history of breast cancer and a professional involvement with health and wellness, I jetted off on holiday last July confident that the results from the biopsy I’d just undertaken would be negative. Unfortunately, a phone call from my consultant received during an otherwise delightful meal in a Tenerife restaurant shattered that illusion.
I had now become one of 280,000 people each year diagnosed with cancer in the UK. The journey I’ve been on since then hasn’t been easy.
But it would have been much harder if I hadn’t been a member of Chase de Vere’s comprehensive PMI scheme which includes cancer cover.
Even though the NHS has an enviable record for cancer treatment, the backlogs are now such that 100,000 patients a year have to wait longer than the stated two weeks to see a cancer specialist, and over 25,000 have to wait more than 62 days to start their treatment.
As confirmed by some of the feedback I gleaned at my breast cancer support groups from women who’d had to go the NHS route, waiting around is the very last thing you want to do if you’re worried about cancer.
Two days after noticing an indentation to my left breast in the shower and phoning my PMI scheme’s specialist cancer line, I was attending an appointment that featured everything from a specialist consultation and ultrasound to a mammogram and biopsy.
It was agreed that the consultant would phone me during my pre-booked family holiday if the biopsy results raised concerns. The ensuing call didn’t actually use the term ‘cancer’ and it did refer reassuringly to something caught at an early stage.
It also detailed an appointment arranged on the day of my return. At this I learned that my type of breast cancer was the least aggressive and easiest to treat and that, because it hadn’t spread to the lymph nodes, it would simply require a lumpectomy and radiotherapy.
Unfortunately, however, the subsequent MRI scan revealed a much-bigger-than-expected eight-centimetre tumour, so we were now talking about a mastectomy, radiotherapy and chemotherapy.
The mastectomy, which involved a five-day hospital stay, took place only two weeks after my original diagnosis. Indeed, the wait was shorter than most people endure on the NHS simply waiting for their biopsy results.
Fortunately, chemotherapy was eventually deemed unnecessary as there was considered little chance of the cancer returning. And, as soon as I had sufficiently healed, radiotherapy took place last November.
If I’d had my radiotherapy on the NHS there could have been a six-month waiting list, and sessions would have lasted three weeks. But, because I was able to use a private centre in Nottingham equipped with all the latest technology, it was all done in a week. Furthermore, my insurer paid for the 50-mile each way daily taxi trips from my Leicestershire home.
I’m back at work full time and the cancer has thankfully gone. I still require quarterly check-ups and annual scans and I’ll be having surgery at the end of the year, although I’m optimistic that I’m through the worst.
This whole experience has given me plenty of time to reflect on both my personal and professional life and how they interact. It made me realise that I needed to do more to educate and inform work colleagues, friends and family and employers on the real value of PMI policies, and how having them in place really can be the difference between life and death.
PMI has often been considered as a ‘luxury’ benefit, which some employers might consider, but well down the pecking order behind pension and life assurance arrangements. Having experienced the value that PMI can add at first hand, I’m passionate about the need for as many people as possible to have PMI cover. This is why I now ensure that this topic is very much on the agenda in the conversations that I have with all of my corporate clients.