What is a waiting period for health insurance?

A health insurance waiting period is the amount of time you have to wait before you can claim on your hospital or extras cover.

Who is this cover for?

Key takeaways

  • You cannot claim on your health insurance until you have served a waiting period.
  • All hospital insurance policies are required to have the same waiting periods (but extras cover varies).
  • There is a 12-month waiting period for pre-existing conditions with some exceptions.

How waiting periods work

When you buy health insurance, there are some things you'll be able to claim almost immediately, such as the cost of an emergency ambulance trip. But there are other services you can't access until you've held your policy for a while.

Waiting periods vary depending on the treatment. In most cases, you'll need to serve a 2-month waiting period before you're covered, with a few exceptions. For example, you have to hold a gold-standard hospital policy for at least 12 months before you can claim for pregnancy or childbirth benefits.

Waiting periods were put in place to keep people from signing up only when they need treatment and then cancelling afterwards. If you were allowed to do this, insurance premiums would go up for all policyholders because there would be so much pressure on the health funds.

Hospital waiting periods

With hospital cover, the Private Health Insurance Ombudsman sets the maximum possible waiting periods for every circumstance and insurers have to stick to them. This means the same waiting periods will apply no matter what hospital policy you get.

Hospital benefitWaiting period
Most pre-existing conditions12 months
Pregnancy and childbirth12 months
All psychiatric care, rehabilitation and palliative care2 months
Other in-hospital treatment2 months
Accidents and ambulance servicesNo waiting period

Extras waiting periods

Extras waiting periods are set by individual health funds so unlike hospital cover, they can vary. However, due to competition between insurers, you'll find that they are typically the same across the majority of health funds. In some cases, health insurers will let you skip waiting periods for certain treatments such as general dental, optical and physiotherapy.

Extras benefitTypical waiting period
General dental2 months
Major dental12 months
Optical2 months
Physiotherapy, chiropractic and osteopathy2 months
Remedial massage2 months
Dietetics, nutrition and weight loss2 months
Pharmacy (non-PBS pharmacy items)2 months
Hearing aids12 months

Waiting periods for pre-existing conditions

Hospital

Hospital

You'll have to wait 12 months before pre-existing medical conditions are covered by your hospital insurance policy. That includes any illnesses you showed symptoms of in the 6 months prior to taking out a hospital policy. The only exception is if your pre-existing medical condition falls under psychiatric care, rehabilitation or palliative care – in which case, you'll only need to serve a 2-month waiting period.

Extras

Extras

There are no pre-existing condition waiting periods with extras health insurance. That means if you've already got bad eyesight, you won't have to wait any longer to claim benefits. You'll just have the standard waiting period.

Waiting periods when you're switching health funds

If you're switching health funds, any waiting periods you've already served should be honoured by your new fund. for hospital cover, this is guaranteed by law. For extras, health funds aren't forced to honour your waiting period, but in practice they tend to do it. They want your business after all.

Note that for the waiting periods to carry over when switching, you'll need to be moving to a policy with the same or lower level of cover. If you upgrade or have more comprehensive cover, you'll likely need to serve those waiting periods again.

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Skipping extras waiting periods (when you can)

"I have chopped and changed extras plans a fair bit, and have found ways to avoid some extras waiting periods. If you sign up to a new combined policy, most big funds will waive those shorter extras waiting periods with a signup bonus. Around the end of financial year you might also see this for extras only policies. At other times, ahm have a few policies like lifestyle extras that have no 2 or 6 month waiting periods. I've used those a few times to claim right away for general dental, optical, physio, and a few other treatments."

Insurance expert

Frequently asked questions

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To make sure you get accurate and helpful information, this guide has been edited by Tim Bennett as part of our fact-checking process.
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Editor, Insurance

Gary Ross Hunter was an editor at Finder, specialising in insurance. He’s been writing about life, travel, home, car, pet and health insurance for over 6 years and regularly appears as an insurance expert in publications including The Sydney Morning Herald, The Guardian and news.com.au. Gary holds a Kaplan Tier 2 General Advice General Insurance certification which meets the requirements of ASIC Regulatory Guide 146 (RG146). See full bio

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Gary Ross has written 645 Finder guides across topics including:
  • Health, home, life, car, pet and travel insurance
  • Managing the cost of living

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