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Discover the affordable route to excellent healthcare

Club Together is all about providing the products and services that matter most to you which is why we’ve joined forces with The Benenden Healthcare Society to give you access to affordable, first class discretionary healthcare at specially selected hospitals across the country.

You can also add as many family and friends to your membership as you like for the same rate.

As a mutual, not-for-profit society, Benenden Healthcare is able to put you at the heart of everything they do. When arranging medical help, they aim to get you a prompt consultation and – where necessary and they are able to help – for you to receive treatment within eight weeks of your diagnosis. Of course, to keep costs low, there are some services the Society cannot provide.

As a Benenden Healthcare member, you’ll enjoy immediate access to a range of advisory and preventative services including round-the-clock access to a GP Advice Line and Counselling Helpline, as well as access to a Health Concern Advice Line.

Who is providing this Healthcare?

Benenden Healthcare is provided by Benenden Healthcare Society which is a mutual, not-for-profit society. Founded in 1905, Benenden Healthcare was originally set up for postal workers. In recent years Benenden Healthcare has expanded the eligibility of its healthcare plan to include members of like-minded organisations, charities, credit unions and co-operatives. So now you too, as a Club Together member could take advantage of excellent healthcare from just £6.50 a month.

What do you want to do now?

First Class Healthcare is closer than you think

Immediate access to a range of advisory services

As a member of Benenden Healthcare you’ll have immediate access to a range of advisory and preventative services you can call upon in an hour of need. For the affordable price of £6.50 a month, you’ll have a wide range of services available to you.

Then after 6 months you can use the full range of services

After your first six months as a Benenden Healthcare member, you will have access to the full range of discretionary services, including help getting prompt diagnosis, up to £1,500 towards diagnosis and minor treatment as an outpatient, treatment and surgery at their specially selected hospitals, help towards physiotherapy, counselling and psychology, and up to £5,000 financial help if you’re diagnosed with cancer or tuberculosis.

Advisory and preventative services

Available immediately

• 24/7 Counselling Helpline: If you are experiencing personal difficulties that are causing stress, Benenden Healthcare can give you information about suitable local services that may provide further help.
• 24/7 GP Advice Line: Speak with a qualified GP at any time, 365 days a year, wherever you are in the world. There’s no limit to the length or number of your calls and Benenden Healthcare can even call you back at their expense.
• Health Concern Advice Line: Help with a wide range of health and lifestyle concerns from stopping smoking to finding specialist support groups for medical conditions.
• Long-term care advice: Benenden Healthcare can offer advice for you or a relative, from explaining benefit entitlement to helping you find the right care for a loved one.
• Award-winning benhealth magazine: Four times a year you’ll receive the health magazine, packed with expert advice, topical feature articles and ideas on how to live a healthy life.
• Discounted health screening: You’ll receive a discount on the standard price of select health assessments.
  

Diagnosis and treatment services

Available after 6 months of membership

• Help getting a prompt diagnosis: Consultations and tests with up to £1,500 towards diagnosis and minor outpatient treatment.
• Treatment at specially selected hospitals: Benenden Healthcare can help with a wide range of treatment and surgical procedures, including hernia repair, varicose veins and cataract operations. Members can choose from a select list of approved hospitals across the country, including the award-winning Benenden Hospital Trust in Kent.
• Prompt treatment for physiotherapy and up to £300 towards counselling and psychology costs: If you need physiotherapy, counselling or psychology Benenden Healthcare can provide prompt treatment for physiotherapy at over 450 partner clinics and up to £300 towards counselling and psychology costs as recommended by your GP or consultant, while any ongoing needs are arranged through the NHS.
• Financial help if you’re living with cancer or tuberculosis: Benenden Healthcare can provide up to £5,000 to help ease the burden of extra costs that comes as a result of these illnesses from travel costs to home help and more.

All for £6.50 a month, that’s just £78 a year.

What do you want to do now?

10 great reasons to join Benenden Healthcare

• Every member pays the same affordable flat rate of just £6.50 per person, per month
• There are no age limits, fixed contracts, medicals or exclusions for pre-existing conditions
• We could help you get prompt diagnosis locally*
• Treatment is available at award-winning Benenden Hospital's or 17 selected hospitals throughout the UK*
• Prompt physiotherapy treatment at one of over 450 partner clinics and financial assistance towards counselling and psychology costs*
• 24-hour GP Advice line available 365 days a year
• Members costs do not rise with age or becasue you use the service
• Freedom to add your family and friends straightaway when you join
• Exclusive member rewards when you join such as half-price leisure breaks, discounts and 2 for 1 offers on great days out
• Voted by our members as the most trusted healthcare provider in the Moneywise Customer Service Awards 2011

*These services have a 6 month qualifying period

What do you want to do now?

Finding out what Benenden offers for Club Together Members

Martin Hellewell met Benenden Healthcare CEO, Ken Hesketh, to ask him about what will be provided for Club Together members.

Club Together member Martin Hellewell is 54 and lives in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire. Martin took early retirement in 2007 following a career in newspaper journalism and local government communications. He continues to do voluntary fundraising work for Macmillan Cancer Support, whose Halifax committee he chaired for six years.

Ken: Would you like me to give you a bit of background on Benenden Healthcare?

Martin: Yes, perhaps you can say a little bit about how you started and how you got to where you are as a company, and how it is that you can offer what seems to be something really worthwhile for about the price of a cup of coffee or even half a pint of bitter!

Ken: Well I think it's a great story. Benenden Healthcare as an organisation has been around since 1904/1905. It wasn't called Benenden Healthcare then. It was kicked off by Charles Garland who worked for the Post Office. He was surrounded by many colleagues who were suffering from TB. A lot of them were dying and he set up a mutual fund. It was the Post Office Workers Union that was the mechanism for this. And very quickly, the Paymaster General lent his support to the idea and the mutual organisation was set up all those years ago. So its aims at that time were very much to provide services to alleviate the effects of TB on Post Office workers. They effectively bought sanatorium facilities where Benenden Hospital in Kent is now. Within 3 or 4 years, they'd found the site and started helping patients. And the funding arrangements haven't changed ever since. It is well over 100 years old now. We now have over 900,000 people in membership. And obviously where it started with TB, it's moved with the times and we now provide a wide range of healthcare and wellbeing services for members and their families. We're in a unique position in healthcare. I think in the minds of the public and even in the minds of politicians, for the most part you're either NHS or you're private. Most people don't see that there is a space between the two which is in broadly what you would call the third sector, the not for profit/charitable sector and that's where we are. The more successful we are at doing what we do, the more it helps us to subsidise the cost of membership for the organisation.

Martin: So how do you offer this product at such a low cost?

Ken: The main reason is because the product is discretionary. It's not a contractual product. Some readers may think we are providing cover and it's not quite like that. We provide membership, but there isn't a policy as such. Our services are not guaranteed and what we can offer may vary over time or depending on the resources available. Membership payments contribute to a central fund and we use that fund to provide services on a discretionary basis to members who most need our help. We ask members to go to the NHS first and our services become available to them provided they have made enquiries about what is available for them locally through the NHS. If what they find there leaves them unhappy or dissatisfied then they would come to us. And when that happens, in our experience, we almost always are able to help them one way or another. In a typical year about 10% of our members will get some form of help from us.

Martin: One of the things that struck me about it, is trying to clarify what we mean by discretionary. Obviously the business model only works if a minority of people are claiming and a majority of people are paying small sums, albeit on a large scale. So how do you apply this discretion?

Ken: The most objective part of that test if you like is by reference to the quality of the NHS services in that part of the world where the member comes from. We have 50-60 people answering phone calls and our people are highly trained to have what can be very difficult conversations with members or their relatives about health problems. Apart from that questioning about what the position is for that particular problem in the area where they live, it is down to our trained staff to make a judgement as to whether the person calling does genuinely need our help or not.

Martin: So would you say that Benenden Healthcare's relationship with its members is a way of trying to overcome some of the inequities of what some may refer to as the ‘postcode lottery' in the NHS?

Ken: That's exactly what I would say – it really goes back to Charles and his Post Office workers. For example, unless they had money saved, there was no help for them. The local authority services that were available at the time couldn't cater for them and so he filled the gap that he saw and I think that's what we're doing now.

Martin: What struck me is that it is very similar in title as an organisation to a trade union. Is that how you see it?

Ken: The constitution is based on an early 20th century trade union model. And it certainly hasn't really changed very much. We have branches, delegations, conferences and a governing body. There have been some changes to accommodate latest best practices of course - so we have external non-executives on the board now - but the majority of the board are elected by our members and that's exactly what the ethos is.

Martin: Presumably you have to find a way so that all of the resources of the organisation don't just go to the people that shout the loudest - which is often what happens in society - rather than those who actually need it.

Ken: Yes it is. Most people use their membership in the way you would hope. It's a model for help which has a lot of attraction. We have members here who care about the mutual fund, who don't want to abuse it. That means we have very low levels of abuse and that means we can offer the product at such a low cost.

Martin: I'm 54 and I have a bit of high blood pressure so I take tablets every morning but mostly I'm quite fit. But if something happens to me, if I was cutting the hedge and I fall off the ladder and do myself a mischief and it would take months to put me right, what happens when I ring you up? What do I get from you?

Ken: The first step for most people would be to call to get our advice on whether we can help. We would ask whether you have checked with your GP regarding the option to use the NHS service in your area and to understand if there would be a waiting list etc. If your health issue was causing you distress because of long waiting lists or whatever then it is likely that we would cover the cost of a specialist consultation. So your local GP could refer you to a private consultant. Benenden Healthcare would cover the costs of this consultation, together with any associated diagnostic tests, up to a limit of £1,500.

Martin: So it's where there's some kind of blockage in the NHS process that you can fast-track patient care? But you wouldn't say yes in every case would you, for example, in Huddersfield if the services are really good and they're going to see someone quickly anyway, why spend money from Benenden Healthcare where someone in another part of the country hasn't got that level of service?

Ken: Correct. We would only be able to help if that service in your area was not as good and was causing you problems. That would be the first step for any condition - whether it's medical or surgical or mental health... anything that requires consultation with a professional of any kind. But as you'd expect - we don't cover everything. We cover most things on the outpatient side of life but when it comes to surgical or in-patient then the field narrows down. When I say narrows down, Benenden Healthcare still covers most of the things you would expect in a private hospital, but there are exceptions, such as major orthopaedic surgery and heart surgery. We cover the cost of treatment provided at Benenden Hospital or one of our 14 other regional treatment centres. We're aiming for a standard where 90% of our members will be within 1 hour travelling time of one of these hospitals. And we audit those hospitals and they're clinically inspected by us. They are usually run by one of the big private hospital organisations, so they are credible.

Martin: I'm a big fan of the NHS and it does a lot of good stuff that people don't perhaps understand. So for example if you can't get the treatment you need in your own area. Is it part of your service to advise people as to where they could go to obtain NHS treatment more quickly in another area?

Ken: We have a number of helplines which can help with queries like that - one for long-term care of the elderly, and we also have a counselling helpline and GP helpline which can help people to get information about what choices might be available to them.

Martin: I suppose there are some people in public service and in other organisations who would probably baulk at the idea of private medicine and private health insurance which they might see as trying to help them jump the queue. Is Benenden Healthcare about helping people jump the queue?

Ken: In a way it is. If we had a perfect NHS that provided what everybody needs at the time they need it wherever they live then there would be no need for Benenden Healthcare, there'd be no need for private medical insurers.

Martin: I think part of the difficulty is that the NHS has to deal with all those chronic conditions that you can't just fix quickly... so it's probably not the most efficient service in the world but then that's part of the reason I think why it struggles - because it can't use its discretion to turn people away.

Ken: I agree with you. I think the NHS has some big problems to deal with. In a way it's not surprising that it can't solve all the problems for everybody.

I'm a pragmatist. I joined Benenden Healthcare believing that, with the NHS we have and the NHS we're going to have over the next 5-10 years, there are elements of the population who need organisations like Benenden Healthcare. And a large part of that group probably can't afford a private medical insurance policy and the fact is we ought to be trying to do something to help them. If you go to France, if you go to Germany, you find there an acceptance that a modern healthcare service can't be provided for everybody just through tax. You have to find complementary ways of supporting the system. In the absence of that there are these gaps which are getting bigger. If Benenden Healthcare doesn't step into the gap somebody else will and I think we've got a model that is far more socially acceptable - and from a users' point of view - more cost effective and acceptable than a private enterprise.

Martin’s rating…
How does Benenden Healthcare hold up against our 5 golden rules for a ‘better deal’?

Honesty: 5/5
There are no false promises with this offer, just a clear description of the benefits you
could get when you need them.

Price guarantee: 5/5
The cost of membership doesn’t rise with age. There’s no promise that the cost for
everyone will not go up over time but that’s not surprising given the low subscriptions
and the reality that medical costs go up faster than general inflation.

Service: 5/5
Based on everything I’ve seen, I can’t fault the service but obviously I’m not a
member yet so haven’t experienced it directly.

Recognition: 5/5
As an incentive to join, Club Together members are also being offered a free hotel deal, click here for details.

Information: 5/5
There’s lots of information on the Benenden website, you can talk to an adviser
directly and you’ll get a comprehensive information pack when you join.

Better deal score: 25/25.

What do you want to do now?

Join Benenden Healthcare for affordable, first class healthcare

Visit the Benenden Healthcare website www.benenden.org.uk/clubtogether to become a member and enjoy a FREE 3 Day Classic Break† with your partner or friend at the location of your choice if you join before 21st January 2012. You’ll receive a glossy brochure with a choice of over 180 participating hotels throughout the UK and Ireland.

2 chances to WIN a London Theatre break for two!††

There's even more reason to apply before 21st January 2012 because you’ll be entered into a prize draw for 2 chances to win a one night London Theatre break for two in a 4*/5* Hotel, plus 2 tickets to a West End show!

Apply now with Benenden