Back pain sufferers and other patients with musculoskeletal complaints may be persuaded to take out a quote for private health insurance after it was revealed that over half of patients have to wait over six weeks for physiotherapy on the NHS. An investigation carried out by Health Insurance and Protection magazine has found that only forty percent of the 126 out of 152 primary care trusts that were included in the study had waiting times of less than six weeks. That’s despite the fact that patients with back pain have a much higher likelihood of returning to work if they are treated within a four to six week time bracket. Employers may find that they prefer to cover their staff with corporate private health insurance if it means that they can beat the queues and return to work in a shorter period of time. Some sufferers face waits of over eighteen weeks in nine primary care trusts across the UK.


Occupational health treatments are not covered by all private health insurance policies so it is important to check the list of benefits of each provider and level of cover whilst comparing policies. Freedom Healthnet offers physiotherapy on all levels of its private health cover, even the most basic policy, and because they are cash plan policies they can be over half the cost of those from other providers. Back problems are a huge cost to businesses in the UK, causing employees to take nearly five million days off work every year. Physiotherapy won’t be able to help all of these problems, but by providing near-immediate access to this treatment, companies could significantly help to cut the number of days lost to sickness and improve the efficiency of their workforce.