Westfield Health Insurance, our expert review

Who is Westfield Health?

Westfield Health has been providing health and wellbeing cover since 1919. It's a trading name of Westfield Contributory Health Scheme Ltd, a not-for-profit organisation with no shareholders, meaning any profits are reinvested into its products, services and charitable giving rather than paid out as dividends.

Alongside Private Health Insurance, Westfield Health offers a Health Cash Plan and a range of business health and wellbeing solutions. Over the last 20 years it has donated more than £15 million to the NHS and other health and wellbeing charities.

Westfield Health's individual health cover is simply called Private Health Insurance, and it comes in two cover levels: Level 1 and Level 2. Both work in the same way, but Level 2 covers a much broader range of procedures for a higher premium.

Private Health Insurance Level 1

Level 1 covers over 60 of the most common surgical procedures, spanning areas such as hip and knee replacement, cataracts, hernia repair, varicose veins, tonsillectomy and a range of gynaecological and ENT procedures. The maximum benefit you can claim over the lifetime of your Level 1 cover is £100,000.

Click here to see the full list of procedures.

Private Health Insurance Level 2

Level 2 covers over 1,300 surgical and medical procedures. Rather than working from a short, named list like Level 1, Westfield Health defines Level 2 cover more broadly as any procedure requiring a general anaesthetic, a regional or local anaesthetic combined with a surgical incision, or an endoscopic fibre optic procedure. The lifetime benefit maximum on Level 2 rises to £250,000.

It is important to note that on both levels, heart disease and cancer-related surgical procedures are excluded. However, Westfield Health will still pay out when cancer is suspected but not yet confirmed - for example, a biopsy - provided the procedure appears on its schedule of procedures.

Click here to see the full procedure list.

Westfield Health Insurance core cover explained

Every Private Health Insurance policy is built around a fixed-price private treatment package. Once you're referred by your GP to a specialist, you contact Westfield Health, who confirm your eligibility and arrange treatment at a private hospital or treatment centre of your choice. This can be anywhere in the UK where a fixed-price package is available. Westfield Health then settles the bill directly with the hospital.

Each procedure on the schedule has its own maximum benefit allowance, which Westfield Health says is reviewed regularly to reflect market rates. If your chosen hospital's package costs more than the allowance (which can happen at some London hospitals, for example), you can choose to pay the difference yourself.

Unlike some other traditional health insurance providers, Westfield Health's Private Health Insurance doesn't have a long menu of add-ons. Instead, there's one optional extra to consider.

Outpatient benefit

By default, Westfield Health's core cover doesn't include outpatient consultations, diagnostic tests or scans, only the surgical procedure itself. Adding the Outpatient benefit gives you up to £1,000 per policy year to put towards:

• Specialist consultations
• Diagnostic tests such as x-rays, blood tests and ultrasounds
• MRI, CT and PET scans

To help manage the cost of adding this benefit, you can choose a £100 excess, which is only ever applied to outpatient claims (never to the surgical procedure itself).

Post-operative physiotherapy

If you select the Outpatient benefit, you'll also be covered for post-operative physiotherapy following your surgery or procedure. You can receive up to 4 sessions if referred by a GP or up to 10 sessions if referred by a specialist. Helpfully, this doesn't come out of your £1,000 outpatient pot, although the £100 excess (if chosen) will still apply if it's your first outpatient claim of the policy year.

Now you know the basics of how Westfield Health's Private Health Insurance works, here's how it compares with more traditional PMI providers.

1. It's not comprehensive PMI but a fixed-benefit alternative

The biggest difference is the underlying design of the Westfield Health Insurance product. Traditional PMI providers cover a broad range of treatment types (inpatient, outpatient, cancer care, mental health and more) without a hard cap on total lifetime spend. Westfield Health's Private Health Insurance instead covers a defined list of surgical procedures up to fixed monetary amounts, with an overall lifetime benefit cap. This helps to keep premiums lower but means the cover is narrower in scope.

2. Your premium won't rise if you claim

Most health insurers use a no-claims discount system, where making a claim moves you down one or more discount levels and pushes up your premium at renewal. Westfield Health doesn't work this way. There's no price increase for claiming, so using your cover won't affect what you pay in future years. This is a notable point of difference from other insurers, where even small claims can cost you a level of no-claims discount.

3. Heart disease and cancer are excluded on all policies

Where traditional health insurers build cancer cover into their core benefits, Westfield Health excludes cancer-related surgical procedures and all heart disease treatment entirely. This is a deliberate trade-off: Westfield Health positions these as areas the NHS already prioritises, and excluding them is what allows it to charge lower premiums. However, it does mean that anyone wanting cancer or cardiac cover would need to look elsewhere or combine this policy with other protection.

4. Your treatment is capped by procedure count and lifetime benefit

You can claim for up to 3 surgical procedures per policy year, and your total claims over the life of the policy are capped at £100,000 on Level 1 or £250,000 on Level 2. Traditional PMI policies don't typically apply a lifetime cap in the same way, so this is an important limit to factor in if you need multiple procedures over time.

5. You're rewarded for using the NHS

If you'd rather have NHS treatment, or a private treatment package isn't suitable for you, Westfield Health pays you a cash benefit worth 25% of the procedure's private treatment amount directly. This is a similar concept to the NHS cash benefits offered by other insurers, though the percentage-based structure is distinctive to Westfield Health.

6. Pricing is simple, but underwriting options are limited

Westfield Health only offers moratorium underwriting - there's no full medical underwriting option, which most other insurers offer to give applicants more certainty over exclusions upfront. Premiums are based on age and the cover level and extras you choose, and aren't affected by where you live, which could be attractive if you live in or near to locations where traditional insurance is more expensive, such as London.

Under Westfield Health’s moratorium underwriting, you won't be covered for any medical condition (or related condition) that you knew about, or had symptoms, advice or treatment for, in the period before your cover started. This look-back period is 2 years for Level 1 cover and 3 years for Level 2 cover. In both cases, once you've gone 2 continuous years without symptoms, treatment or advice for that condition, it becomes eligible for cover.

It's worth noting that chronic (long-term) conditions are permanently excluded from the policy, regardless of how long ago they started. Because chronic conditions typically require ongoing monitoring or management, it's unlikely you'd ever have the 2 continuous symptom-free years needed to bring them into cover.

If you're transferring from another Westfield Health private health plan, you may be offered Continued Moratorium, Continuation of Personal Medical Exclusions (CPME), or Medical History Disregarded (MHD) underwriting, depending on your existing terms.

What's not covered by Westfield Health insurance?

Westfield Health's Private Health Insurance has a long list of standard exclusions set out in its plan guide. Some of the most significant include:

This isn't an exhaustive list of everything that Westfield Health won’t cover. There are over 40 standard exclusions set out in Section 10 of its plan guide, so it's worth reading in full alongside any personal exclusions that apply to your policy.

Westfield Health's pricing is more straightforward than most PMI providers. Premiums are based on your age, cover level and whether you choose outpatient cover, and aren't affected by where you live or whether you've claimed before.

As the table below shows, a Level 1 policy without outpatient cover starts from £6.46 a month for a 20-year-old, rising to £35.57 a month at age 70. Level 2 without outpatient cover costs roughly 157% more than Level 1 at every age, reflecting the jump from around 60 covered procedures to over 1,300. Monthly premiums for Level 2 without outpatient cover range from £16.5 for a 20-year-old to £92.45 for a 70-year-old.

Adding the £1,000 outpatient benefit increases the premium considerably on both levels, and proportionally more so on Level 1, given its lower starting price. However, choosing the optional £100 excess can help offset some of that extra cost by trimming around 7% off your Level 1 premium and 4-5% off your Level 2 premium.

How does Westfield Health compare with traditional PMI on price?

Westfield Health's Private Health Insurance undercuts traditional PMI at every age: Level 2 with outpatient cover costs roughly 27-31% less than myTribe's 2026 research average for Comprehensive PMI, while Westfield's entry-level Level 1 policy (no outpatient cover) comes in at around a quarter of the price of Basic PMI.

For a 50-year-old, that's £11.41 a month versus £60.84 for Basic health insurance, and £56.46 versus £96.34 for the closest comparable comprehensive-style cover. 

Of course it is important to not lose sight of the fact that Westfield's lower price reflects its narrower cover, compared with the broader protection traditional PMI provides.

You should read our guide on the average cost of private health insurance in the UK to get an idea of how Westfield Health’s pricing compares to other insurers.

Westfield Health’s underwriting options are more restricted compared with most PMI providers, which typically offer a choice between moratorium and full medical underwriting.

You must be between 18 and 79 years old when your cover starts to be eligible for a policy. There's no upper age limit to remain covered once you've joined, though existing policyholders must be under 80 to upgrade their level of cover. 

Moratorium underwriting

Moratorium is the only underwriting option available to new Westfield Health Private Health Insurance customers. You don't need to declare any pre-existing conditions or undergo a medical to apply. Instead, any condition you've had symptoms, advice or treatment for in the 2 years (Level 1) or 3 years (Level 2) before your cover starts is excluded, until you've gone 2 continuous years without symptoms, treatment or advice.

Switching from another Westfield Health plan

If you're moving from another Westfield Health private health plan, you may be offered one of the following instead:

• Continued Moratorium - using your original plan's start date to calculate your moratorium period
• Continuation of Personal Medical Exclusions (CPME) - carrying across any conditions already excluded on your previous Westfield Health plan
• Medical History Disregarded (MHD) - pre-existing conditions are covered for the procedures listed in the schedule of procedures

Where can I find customer reviews on Westfield Health insurance?

Westfield Health holds an “excellent” 4.6-star rating on Trustpilot, based on over 2,800 reviews covering its full range of products, which include its Health Cash Plan and business health and wellbeing solutions as well as Private Health Insurance.

As with any provider, it's worth filtering reviews where possible to focus on feedback from private health insurance customers specifically.

Is it worth having Westfield Health insurance?

Whether Westfield Health's Private Health Insurance is worth it depends on what you're looking for. If you want comprehensive PMI that includes cancer and heart cover, unlimited lifetime benefits and a wide range of outpatient and mental health add-ons, providers like Bupa, WPA, The Exeter, Vitality or Aviva are likely to be a better fit.

But if you're looking for an affordable way to get faster access to common surgical procedures, without your premium rising if you claim, Westfield Health's Private Health Insurance could be a sensible, budget-friendly option.

How to get more information about Westfield Health insurance cover

You can find out more about Westfield Health's Private Health Insurance, including its full plan guide and Insurance Product Information Document, on the Westfield Health website.

To see how it compares against comprehensive PMI providers, take a look at our review of the best private health insurance in 2026.

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