Bupa

Bupa /buːpə/ is a British international healthcare provisioning and multi-insurance group, with its origins and headquarters in the United Kingdom, but now serving 32 million customers in 190 countries. It is a private healthcare company limited by guarantee,[1] unlike the UK's National Health Service (NHS), which is a tax-funded healthcare system. While initially growing organically through green-field expansions, it has recently tended to function akin to a Private Equity firm, with its corporate strategy heavily influenced by M&A activity in order to consolidate itself as a market leader in healthcare provisioning and multi-insurance. It is consistently ranked among the best places to work, having placed 5th in the 2019 edition of LinkedIn's Top Companies in the UK.[2]

Bupa
Company limited by guarantee
IndustryHealthcare, Insurance
Founded1947 (1947)
HeadquartersLondon, United Kingdom
Key people
Evelyn Bourke, CEO
Roger Davis, Chairman
Productshealth insurance, care homes, health at work services, hospitals, dental clinics, health assessments
Revenue £11.9 billion GBP (2018)
£613 million GBP (2018)
Number of employees
80,000 (2018)
Websitewww.bupa.com

History

Bupa (originally the British United Provident Association) was established in 1947[3] when seventeen British provident associations joined together to provide healthcare for the general public. The firm is a private company limited by guarantee; it has no shareholders, and any profits (after tax) are reinvested in the business. The service offered by Bupa began as private medical insurance, offering policies to individuals, companies and other organisations, and eventually expanded to include privately run Bupa hospitals.

Acquisitions and Divestments

In 2007, the company announced the sale of its UK hospitals to Spire Healthcare.[4] However, during 2008, the firm acquired the London-based Cromwell Hospital flagship hospital to provide healthcare to its members and other private patients including medical tourists from outside the UK.

Approval was given in the same year for a merger between Bupa's Australian arm (which until then comprised HBA and Mutual Community) and insurance group MBF.[5] The merger created what is now Australia's largest private health insurance group, with 3.98m lives covered. On 1 December 2008, Clinovia's name was changed to Bupa Home Healthcare. In October 2010 the firm sold Bupa Health Assurance to Resolution Limited, and it has been rebranded as part of Friends Life.[6] At the end of 2012 Bupa acquired the largest private healthcare network in Poland, Lux Med, from the private equity fund Mid Europa Partners for €400m.[7] In February 2015 Bupa acquired a controlling share in Chilean private healthcare network Cruz Blanca, which has a 21% share in the local market.[8] It emerged in January 2016 that the company was to sell its domiciliary care business, which provided care to around 35,500 people, to Celesio AG.[9]

Over the years, it has diversified away from its core health insurance business and is now an international healthcare company with services that include travel insurance, health insurance, care homes, expatriate insurance, health assessments, occupational health services and hospitals. When the Health and Social Care Act 2012 came into force in April 2013 Bupa won the first high-value contract – a £235m deal to provide musculoskeletal services in West Sussex jointly with Central Surrey Health in November 2014.[10]

It bought the dentistry chain Oasis in November 2016 for £835 million from private equity firm Bridgepoint Capital. Oasis runs 380 UK dental practices, both NHS and private, with more than 1,800 dentists. It has an annual revenue of £277 million.[11] The name of the business was changed to Bupa Dental Care. In January 2019 it acquired 9 more practices, making a total of 23 in 6 months.[12]

It bought two care homes in Poole from Primetower in October 2016.[13]

In August 2017 it sold 122 care homes, with 9,000 beds, to HC-One for £300 million.[14]

During the 2018-19 financial year, Bupa remained the biggest player by customer numbers, with almost 3.6 million customers. However, the insurer has experienced losses in Australia- 50,000 net customer losses across all products and almost 80,000 of its core hospital cover customers.[15]

Operations

The company has its head office in central London, with main UK contact centres in Staines and Salford Quays. There are also offices in Brighton (Bupa Global), Bristol (Bupa Dental Care) and Leeds (Bupa Care Services) in the UK, Adelaide, Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne in Australia (Bupa Australia and Bupa Aged Care Australia), Chile (Bupa Chile), New Delhi (Max Bupa), Madrid (Sanitas), Boston (Health Dialog), Beijing (Bupa China), Hong Kong (Bupa Hong Kong & Quality Healthcare), Jeddah (Bupa Arabia), and Miami,

Bupa (Sanitas) offices in Madrid (Spain).

The firm also owns several healthcare companies overseas including Spain's largest healthcare company, Sanitas, and acquired ihi Danmark and Amedex (Miami, US) in September 2005. In December 2007, it purchased DCA Agedcare Group in Australia and New Zealand, making it a leading player in these markets. Also in December 2007, it announced the purchase of Health Dialog,[3] a provider of chronic condition management and "shared decision making" services.

In April 2013, the company acquired Lux Med, Poland's largest private healthcare provider which runs businesses in health funding and provision all over the country through a national network of 194 health centres, including outpatient facilities, diagnostic centres, hospitals, and a large nursing and residential care home.[16]

The firm has entered the Indian health insurance market through a joint venture with the local conglomerate, Max India, called Max Bupa Health Insurance Limited.[17]

In the Middle East, Bupa has entered into a joint-venture partnership with Nazer Group – a family-owned diversified holding company – and created Bupa Middle East in 1997, operating out of Bahrain.[18] When health insurance regulation issues arose in Saudi Arabia, the company was floated on the Saudi stock market as Bupa Arabia, which is currently the leading health insurance company in Saudi Arabia.

According to Stuart Fletcher in 2013 'there was a six percent decline in the number of individuals covered' by private health insurance, 'and the people who are more likely to claim are the least likely to drop the insurance, so the risk pool is deteriorating.' Bupa has protected its finances by reducing payments to consultants. This provoked the British Medical Association to complain to the Competition Commission, which published a report into the private healthcare sector in 2013, probing insurers' power over consultants' fees. It decided that by trying to keep prices down and promote competition, Bupa was doing "exactly what customers would expect". But it did warn that companies like Bupa need to ensure they communicate better with policyholders about what their premiums entitle them to.[19]

Bupa's former Irish subsidiary, Bupa Ireland, was set up in 1996 and eventually had three hundred employees in Fermoy, County Cork and 475,000 members – a 22% share of the Irish market. In 2006 it announced its intention to close in response to the Irish Government's policy of risk equalisation.[20] In 2007 the business was bought by the Quinn Group and traded as Quinn Healthcare.[21] Since 2012 it has been trading as Laya Healthcare, and since 2015 it has been owned by AIG.[22]

Controversies

Bupa has been subject to criticism in Australia and the UK regarding alleged cost-cutting and standards in care homes for elderly people. [23][24] In each country, it receives public sector funding.[25][26]

Bupa UK has been criticised by some judges, coroners, the Health & Safety Executive, local authorities and care regulators regarding alleged cost-cutting and evidence of institutional failures in some of its UK residential care homes.[27][28][29][30][31].[32][33].[34][35][36][37][38][39]

Staff and families of residents in some Bupa UK care homes have criticised Bupa for allegedly prioritising profits to the detriment of care.[40][41]

In 1999 seven care workers who reported abuse of residents to Bupa UK senior management became known as the Bupa Seven in Parliamentary and media reports.[42][43] One of this group was Eileen Chubb, who claimed in a series of reports that Bupa UK had failed to take remedial action on issues reported by staff and relatives of residents, and that staff had reported to the Care Quality Commission that they were afraid to raise concerns.[40] Some UK care workers have claimed that they were forced to leave or were dismissed for raising concerns to Bupa.[44][45][46]

In 2018 Bupa UK was fined £3,000,000 after a resident died after contracting Legionnaire's disease.[47]

In 2016, Bupa Australia admitted it had rejected 7,740 claims without a doctor's review in the five years before that date.[48] For years, it had falsely told customers that their rejections had been "determined by a medical practitioner". Bupa detected the failings itself and conducted its own internal investigation before referring the matter to the Department of Health. But the Commonwealth Ombudsman had raised concerns about Bupa's compliance with the law two years earlier, in 2014. There was no public investigation to uncover the full extent of Bupa's failings.[49]

In 2017 it was reported that an Australian elderly cancer patient had been found with maggots 'crawling out of his ears'. [50]

In 2017 Bupa Global reported a data breach involving 547,000 health plan customers.[51]

In 2019 Bupa issued a formal apology for care failures in its care homes in Australia after the Minister for Aged Care and Senior Australians Richard Colbeck called Bupa's "persistent failure" to meet the standards set by the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission "simply unacceptable".[52]

Also in 2019 the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission alleged misrepresentation of services for which residents had paid, affecting 4,306 residents in care homes and Bupa issued an unreserved apology and reimbursement with interest.[53]

In 2019, Bupa Australia was accused of not paying up on 270 invoices worth an estimated $73,000 to psychologists treating military personnel. The psychologist said there were bottlenecks with Bupa's referral system causing delays in appointment allocations.[54]

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References
  1. "Financial results". Bupa. Retrieved 1 October 2018.
  2. Carroll, Katie (3 April 2019). "Top Companies 2019: Where the UK wants to work now". LinkedIn. Retrieved 31 August 2019.
  3. "Health Dialog sold in $775M deal". Boston Business Journal. 18 December 2007. Retrieved 2 October 2018.
  4. Kollewe, Julia (18 June 2007). "BUPA sells hospitals to private equity firm". The Guardian. Retrieved 13 February 2012.
  5. "MBF-BUPA merger gets court go ahead". ABC News (Australia). 14 May 2008. Retrieved 14 May 2008.
  6. Bupa insurance operation snapped up by Resolution Archived 24 October 2010 at the Wayback Machine - Financial Times
  7. "Mid Europa Completes the Sale of LUX MED to Bupa". Mid Europa Partners. 15 April 2013. Retrieved 16 November 2015.
  8. "Grupo inglés Bupa Sanitas negocia compra de Cruz Blanca y pagará alto premio por acción" [English group Bupa Sanitas negotiates purchase of Cruz Blanca and will pay high premium per share]. La Segunda (in Spanish). 2 December 2013. Retrieved 16 November 2015.
  9. "Celesio in exclusivity to acquire Bupa's home care division". Health Investor. 21 January 2016. Retrieved 27 January 2016.
  10. Campbell, Denis (19 November 2014). "Private firms on course to net £9bn of NHS contracts". The Guardian. Retrieved 20 November 2014.
  11. "Bupa snaps up dentistry group Oasis for £835m from private equity house Bridgepoint". City AM. 18 November 2016. Retrieved 15 December 2016.
  12. "Bupa acquires nine new UK and Ireland dental practices". Dentistry. 23 January 2019. Retrieved 28 February 2019.
  13. "Bupa UK acquires The Links and The Lindsay care homes in Poole". Primetower. Retrieved 24 December 2016.
  14. Bow, Michael (23 August 2017). "HC-One seals Bupa £300m care home deal despite frets on debt". Evening Standard. Retrieved 3 September 2017.
  15. Fernyhough, James (5 November 2019). "Bupa biggest loser in private health exodus". Australian Financial Review. Retrieved 10 December 2019.
  16. bupa.com, Bupa Corporate Website (17 July 2017). "Bupa in Poland". Bupa Corporate Website.
  17. Max India Press Release New Delhi, 11 July 2008. Archived 10 May 2010 at the Wayback Machine
  18. "Bupa Middle East Ltd". Arabian Business Community (ABC). Northstar Media. Retrieved 2 October 2018.
  19. Sunderland, Ruth (1 January 2014). "CITY INTERVIEW: Boss Stuart Fletcher fighting the flab at Bupa". This is Money. Retrieved 3 January 2014.
  20. "BUPA to withdraw from Irish market". RTÉ. 14 December 2006. Retrieved 16 November 2015.
  21. MJ Flood Technology. "Aventas Group - Welcome to Aventas Group". quinn-group.com. Archived from the original on 27 July 2012. Retrieved 16 November 2015.
  22. "Our story, our people". Laya Healthcare Ireland. Retrieved 16 November 2015.
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  26. "Care homes market study: summary of final report". GOV.UK. Retrieved 20 July 2020.
  27. "Care firm fined for patient death". 2 February 2007. Retrieved 19 July 2020.
  28. "Dehydration risk to care home residents". BBC News. 24 September 2015. Retrieved 19 July 2020.
  29. "Pay-out ordered over 'poor care'". BBC News. 21 June 2011. Retrieved 19 July 2020.
  30. "Care home gets 14 days to improve". BBC News. 19 September 2011. Retrieved 19 July 2020.
  31. "'At risk' home residents moved". BBC News. 12 June 2013. Retrieved 19 July 2020.
  32. "Bupa cost-cutting 'disgraceful'". BBC News. 16 March 2012. Retrieved 19 July 2020.
  33. "Abuse-hit care home report was delayed". BBC News. 31 May 2018. Retrieved 19 July 2020.
  34. "Home fined over strangled woman". BBC News. 19 January 2011. Retrieved 19 July 2020.
  35. "Bupa fined over care home death". 7 September 2006. Retrieved 19 July 2020.
  36. "Care unit closure after 'unsafe' report". BBC News. 2 September 2016. Retrieved 19 July 2020.
  37. "Unsafe care home put in special measures". BBC News. 17 January 2017. Retrieved 19 July 2020.
  38. McCann, Phil (15 September 2015). "'Basic needs not met' at care home". BBC News. Retrieved 19 July 2020.
  39. "Troubled nursing home closed by Bupa". BBC News. 18 June 2014. Retrieved 20 July 2020.
  40. "Breaking the Silence 3 | Compassion in Care". compassionincare.com. Retrieved 19 July 2020.
  41. "Scandal-hit care home to reopen". www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com. Retrieved 20 July 2020.
  42. "BUPA Seven (Hansard, 15 July 2004)". api.parliament.uk. Retrieved 19 July 2020.
  43. "The Whistleblower's Tale | Primary Care Nursing Review". pcnr.co.uk. Retrieved 20 July 2020.
  44. Chubb, Eileen (2008). Beyond the Façade. UK: Chipmunka Publishing. ISBN 978-1-84747-633-3.
  45. "Whistleblower fired 'after concerns aired'". BBC News. 22 October 2018. Retrieved 20 July 2020.
  46. CHUBB, EILEEN (November 2016). "Breaking The Silence Part 3 Health Hazards" (PDF). Compassion In Care. p. 20. Retrieved 20 July 2020.
  47. "Bupa fined £3m over Legionnaire's death". BBC News. 14 June 2018. Retrieved 19 July 2020.
  48. "Bupa apologises to customers for incorrect process". Bupa Australia. 12 September 2016. Retrieved 19 December 2019.
  49. Knaus, Christopher (8 July 2019). "Australia's biggest private health insurers illegally rejected thousands of claims". The Guardian. Retrieved 19 December 2019.
  50. https://www.hulldailymail.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/maggots-crawling-out-ears-family-3280810
  51. "Bupa data breach hits 500,000 customers". BBC News. 13 July 2017. Retrieved 19 July 2020.
  52. "Bupa makes formal apology for aged care failures". ABC Radio. 13 September 2019. Retrieved 20 July 2020.
  53. "Bupa Aged Care faces ACCC action over alleged false claims at aged care centres". www.abc.net.au. 16 April 2019. Retrieved 20 July 2020.
  54. Martin, Lisa (13 September 2019). "Bupa defence health contract: warning lives could be at risk over referrals logjam". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 10 December 2019.
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