General practitioners are taking too long to respond to letters requesting further medical information on patients, Ian Davies has claimed.
The adviser with Staff Davies Financial Services in Merthyr Tydfil said it was only a matter of time before a delay could result in a client being uninsured when they needed to make a claim.
Mr Davies said he threatened to report a GP to the board of a local NHS trust after it took six weeks to fill in and complete a medical report on behalf of a couple in their 20s.
The report was needed to complete an application for mortgage-linked life insurance.
Mr Davies said: “The woman had a non-life threatening condition that the insurer required some further information on. It took six calls by myself, five calls by the insurer and two calls by the customer. Six weeks later we finally got the GP to fill in and compete a targeted medical report.”
Mr Davies said one in every five applications needed a doctor’s report and that they could take anything from one week to six months to be completed.
He added: “There needs to be some industry standard in terms of turnaround times. The £50 to 60 per paid per report from the insurance firms to the doctors is not incentive enough for them to do the job as a priority.”
Bob Blocksidge, a recently retired protection adviser from Newcastle Upon Tyne, said: “I recall a case a few years ago when one surgery appeared to be ignoring medical report requests for many weeks, and did not respond to prompts by the client by phone and in person.
“I was told that the only way to move the matter along was to pay an expediting fee, £25 I think, which would result in the report being dealt with quicker. This meant the practice was gaining financially from its inefficiencies, attitude and inability to provide a complete service to patients. It rankled that my client and I were being held to ransom.”
John Canning, chairman of the British Medical Association’s GP professional fees committee said: “Six weeks is a long time to have to wait. We would ask GPs to complete the reports within three weeks. If they cannot do so then they need to let the insurer know so other provisions can be made.”
As far back as April, the Association of British Insurers said the industry was working to speed up the application process by rolling out the application of technology that could negate the need for medicals or reports.
Robert Morrison, chief underwriter for Aviva said that where possible it would try and get the full records of a client rather than a bespoke GP report. He said: “Using full medical data also helps us to reduce the risk of receiving incomplete information from a GP.”
