BUPA experience
Comparing BUPA UK private healthcare with Singapore
Published: Wednesday, May 1, 2024 Last modified: Wednesday, Oct 2, 2024
Singapore experience
- Register for AIA (non-trivial)
- Install AIA app
- Get referral from online GP (WhiteCoat?) - usually done within hour.
- Download referral letter
- Book consultant appointment and goto consultant, pay the consulant fee.
- Get bill and put it through AIA app, together with the referral letter.
- Get money back
The online GP will dispatch drugs to your home on the same day if needed.
BUPA experience
- Register for BUPA (non-trivial)
- Install the BUPA app
Spend days working out how to get an online GP appointment for a referral. It used to be called Babylon health and now it is called eMed Healthcare.
- Install eMed Healthcare app
- Register with eMed Healthcare (not the same as BUPA)
- Book an appointment with an online
doctornurse (not the same day) - Get referral. Tbh I am still not sure how to download it.
- Back to BUPA app, to try get authorisation for the referral.
- After clicking a button, I am on a call center menu. 01706 335745. First menu asks me if I have a confirmed cancer diagnosis.
- Navigate the menu and human asks for my membership number.
- Clumsily navigate back to BUPA app to find membership number. (BUPA membership number is under Cover details)
- Call center person also asks for my name and date of birth, and we continue. She then puts me through to member services IIUC.
- Process repeats, asked for membership number, name, date of birth and my post code.
- BUPA service person asks for details of the referal. She says she doesn’t have access to the referal (to my suprise). I now need to navigate to eMed to try read out the referral details.
- She then puts me on hold to find consultants based on my postcode.
- The closest consultants is sent by email. I am told to call the consultant to book an appointment.
- Assuming I get an consultant appointment, she says I would need to call BUPA again to get authorisation for any work that needs to be done, and I would need to pay upto 250GBP for the consultation, since that is my excess for the policy.
- I ask how come I couldn’t see the 250GBP access in the App and what is the point of the app, since I can’t do anything with it. She then suggests to put me through to the digital team to ask questions what the App is for.