Mildura Health Fund

Looking for a health cover from MDHF? Review cover from Mildura District Health Fund and compare your options online.

Mildura District Hospital Fund, also known as Mildura Health Fund or MDHF for short, is a not-for-profit fund that has been looking after the health care needs of its members since 1929. It offers a range of simple and easy to understand cover options to take the hassle out of private health insurance, and it has agreements with hundreds of hospitals nationwide.

What cover options are available from MDHF?

Private health insurance is all about giving you the freedom to choose: choose your doctor, choose your hospital, and choose when you’re treated. When you take out extras cover, health insurance is also about helping you cover the cost of a range of common treatments not covered by Medicare.

In addition, taking out private health cover makes even better sense from a financial point of view. Taking out cover before you turn 31 years of age allows you to avoid the Lifetime Health Cover premium loading, while high income earners can also be hit with a Medicare Levy Surcharge by the government if they don’t have appropriate private hospital cover in place.

As a not-for-profit health fund, Mildura Health Fund is run solely to benefits its members - not shareholders. With more than 85 years of health cover experience, this award-winning insurer offers a range of hospital and extras cover options to provide protection for the services you need and none you don’t.

If you like the sound of the Mildura Health Fund, read on to find out more about the cover options available and the benefits of joining.

What are the different Mildura District Health Fund policy options?

Mildura Health Fund offers two hospital covers and a range of extras cover options, allowing you to take out standalone cover or mix and match your cover to create a policy tailored to your needs. Its hospital cover options include:

• Five Star Hospital Benefits. This is Mildura Health Fund’s premium hospital cover option. Available with a choice of four excess amounts, nil, $150, $250 or $500, it provides 100% of cover for shared or private room accommodation and theatre costs, intensive care and more in over 400 private hospitals around Australia.
• Basic Hospital Benefits. This entry-level hospital cover option is designed for the young and healthy. It covers shared room accommodation as a private patient in a public hospital, giving you the freedom to choose your doctor or specialist. Some high-cost procedures, for example hip replacements, are excluded from cover.

Mildura District Hospital Fund’s extras cover options include:

• Five Star. This top-level extras cover Mildura Health Fund option covers physio, occupational therapy, exercise physiology, podiatry, dietician, speech therapy, naturopathy, remedial massage, acupuncture, osteopathy chiropractic, psychology, optical, hearing aids, general and major dental, orthodontics and more.
• Ancillary Plus. This is the fund’s mid-range general treatment cover and it still provides cover for a wide range of treatments but typically to lower benefit limits. It covers optical, hearing aids, psychology, chiropractic, orthoptic, physio, occupational therapy and more.
• Basic Ancillary. This is Mildura Health Fund’s entry-level general treatment cover and it provides a basic level of protection against the cost of physiotherapy, optical, occupational therapy, naturopathy, speech therapy, hearing aids and more.
• Dental. This provides gap free preventative dental cover and also covers general dental, major dental and orthodontics.

Are there any additional benefits?

• Handy claims app available from the Apple App Store and the Google Play store.
• Mildura Health has a list of no-Gap providers to allow you to eliminate your out-of-pocket expenses on a range of services.
• Members can receive a 2.5% discount off the cost of cover when they pay their premiums by direct debit.
• A 30-day cooling-off period applies if you obtain a policy but then change your mind about taking out cover.
• Children remain covered on family memberships until they reach 21 years of age, while fulltime students can receive cover until they turn 25.

What isn't covered? 

Mildura Health Fund won't pay your health insurance claim if:

• It is for services or treatment rendered outside Australia.
• It is for services or treatment received more than two years prior to the date you lodge your claim.
• You receive treatment while you are serving a waiting period.
• It is for services that are excluded from your policy.
• You have already reached your annual benefit limit for a particular treatment.
• It is for a hospital service for which Medicare does not pay a benefit, for example cosmetic surgery.

Whether you join Mildura Health Fund or another insurer, you should be aware that waiting periods may apply to your cover. If you join from another health fund, any waiting periods you have already served for an equivalent or higher level of cover will be recognised by your new insurer. However, if you join Mildura Health Fund and it is the first time you have taken out private health cover you will need to serve a two-month waiting period before you can receive many benefits. Some other benefits, such as treatment for pre-existing conditions, will only be available once you have served a 12-month waiting period.

Mildura District Health excess

When you are admitted to hospital cover you may be required to pay an excess, which is effectively your contribution to the cost of your hospital accommodation. While no excess is payable for members who hold Basic Hospital Benefits cover, Five Star Hospital Benefits is available with a choice of excesses - nil, $150, $250 or $500. The higher the excess you choose, the lower your premium payments will be.

You’ll only need to pay an excess when you are admitted to hospital as an overnight or day patient. Singles only need to pay an excess once a year, while for family policies the excess is payable once per person per year (up to a maximum of twice per year for each family).

Making a claim

Claiming on your Mildura District Hospital Fund policy is easy:

• For extras claims. On-the-spot electronic claiming is available by simply swiping your card at more than 50,000 health care providers around Australia
• Where this is not an option. You can also lodge claims via the fund’s handy mobile app or by downloading a claim form from the Mildura Health Fund website, filling it out and submitting it by post, email or fax.

Download the Mildura claims app

Fund	Android	iOS
Mildura Health Fund

One last thing you might want to know

Health funds in Australia pay different benefit amounts for different medical services, usually increasing with the severity of the condition. For example, a claim on a colonoscopy will be less than a claim on a hip replacement.

To give you a clearer picture of how health funds calculate payments this table lists 22 commonly claimed medical treatments and the dollar amount they will pay for each: