To find an HCF-participating doctor or extras provider near you, use our Find a Provider tool.
Our network includes over 12,000 extras providers like dentists, physios, opticians and more, as well as hundreds of doctors and the hospitals they operate in across Australia. By choosing a participating provider in our extensive network, we can help reduce your medical treatment costs while you’re in hospital, lower your out-of-pocket costs on popular extras like dental, physio, optical, chiro, osteo, remedial massage, and more.
To make sure your health cover suits your needs, and everyone in your household is covered, you can choose from the following cover types:
- Single (1 adult)
- Couple (2 adults)
- Family (2 adults and dependants)
- Single parent (1 adult and dependants)
Dependants listed on your cover are automatically covered at no extra cost under your family cover until the day before they turn 22, or 31 if they're full time students, still rely on you for maintenance and support and aren’t married or in a de facto relationship.
If they’re not full time students but still meet the other criteria, you can also continue to cover them until they turn 31 on selected products that have Extended Family Cover and a surcharge will apply.
Making claims on services included in your cover will depend on how long you're waiting periods are.
Hospital waiting periods:
- Palliative care: 2 months
- Hospital psychiatric services+: 2 months
- Rehabilitation: 2 months
- Pre-existing ailments or conditions: 12 months
- Pregnancy and birth: 12 months
- All other hospital services, including treatments under Accident Safeguard: 2 months
Extras waiting periods:
- Health management programs: 2 months
- Artificial aids and appliances (e.g. low visions aids, blood glucose monitors): 12 to 24 months
- Foot orthotics: 12 months
- Minor podiatric procedures: 12 months
- Teeth whitening, bridges and crowns, indirect fillings: 12 months
- Dentures: 12 months
- Endodontics: 12 months
- Hearing aids: 12 months
- Occlusal therapy: 12 months
- Oral surgery: 12 months
- Orthodontics: 12 months
- Periodontics: 12 months
- Pre-existing ailments and conditions: 12 months
- Prosthodontics: 12 months
- Dental veneers: 12 months
- School accident benefit: 2 to 12 months
- All other extras services: 2 months
Switching to HCF is easy. Once you’ve found the right cover for you and select ‘continue to join', you’ll have an opportunity to tell us about your previous health fund. From there, we’ll contact them for you to handle the cancellation, and, as part of this, we’ll request your transfer certificate which can take up to 14 days. Once we receive it, you’ll be able to start claiming on services that you’re eligible for.
If you held an equivalent level of cover with your previous fund, and join HCF within 30 days of leaving, you won't have to re-serve any waiting periods, and all your remaining benefit limits will transfer across. If you're switching and upgrading your cover, you'll need to serve the necessary waiting periods for your higher entitlements.
Lifetime Health Cover (LHC) loading is a government policy designed to encourage Australians to take out private hospital cover earlier and ease pressure on the public healthcare system. If you don’t have a level hospital cover by 1 July after your 31st birthday, a loading will be added to your health insurance premium if you later decide to take out cover.
For every year you delay, your premium increases by 2% up to a maximum of 70%. For example, if you wait until 40 to take out cover, you'll pay 20% more than if you had joined at 30. The loading is payable for 10 years of continuous cover.
A pre-existing condition is an ailment, illness or condition that you had at any time in the 6 months before a health insurance policy started. The condition may not have been diagnosed by a doctor or specialist and you may not have been aware of the condition, but if signs and symptoms were present in those 6 months, the condition will likely be considered ‘pre-existing’.
This applies if you’re upgrading to a higher level of health cover, reducing your excess, adding a dependant or child to your policy (unless they’re babies added within certain timeframes) or if you’re new to private health insurance or had a gap in cover.
A waiting period of 12 months will be applied for treatment of a pre-existing condition.
Frequently Asked Questions
To find an HCF-participating doctor or extras provider near you, use our Find a Provider tool.
Our network includes over 12,000 extras providers like dentists, physios, opticians and more, as well as hundreds of doctors and the hospitals they operate in across Australia. By choosing a participating provider in our extensive network, we can help reduce your medical treatment costs while you’re in hospital, lower your out-of-pocket costs on popular extras like dental, physio, optical, chiro, osteo, remedial massage, and more.
To make sure your health cover suits your needs, and everyone in your household is covered, you can choose from the following cover types:
- Single (1 adult)
- Couple (2 adults)
- Family (2 adults and dependants)
- Single parent (1 adult and dependants)
Dependants listed on your cover are automatically covered at no extra cost under your family cover until the day before they turn 22, or 31 if they're full time students, still rely on you for maintenance and support and aren’t married or in a de facto relationship.
If they’re not full time students but still meet the other criteria, you can also continue to cover them until they turn 31 on selected products that have Extended Family Cover and a surcharge will apply.
Making claims on services included in your cover will depend on how long you're waiting periods are.
Hospital waiting periods:
- Palliative care: 2 months
- Hospital psychiatric services+: 2 months
- Rehabilitation: 2 months
- Pre-existing ailments or conditions: 12 months
- Pregnancy and birth: 12 months
- All other hospital services, including treatments under Accident Safeguard: 2 months
Extras waiting periods:
- Health management programs: 2 months
- Artificial aids and appliances (e.g. low visions aids, blood glucose monitors): 12 to 24 months
- Foot orthotics: 12 months
- Minor podiatric procedures: 12 months
- Teeth whitening, bridges and crowns, indirect fillings: 12 months
- Dentures: 12 months
- Endodontics: 12 months
- Hearing aids: 12 months
- Occlusal therapy: 12 months
- Oral surgery: 12 months
- Orthodontics: 12 months
- Periodontics: 12 months
- Pre-existing ailments and conditions: 12 months
- Prosthodontics: 12 months
- Dental veneers: 12 months
- School accident benefit: 2 to 12 months
- All other extras services: 2 months
Switching to HCF is easy. Once you’ve found the right cover for you and select ‘continue to join', you’ll have an opportunity to tell us about your previous health fund. From there, we’ll contact them for you to handle the cancellation, and, as part of this, we’ll request your transfer certificate which can take up to 14 days. Once we receive it, you’ll be able to start claiming on services that you’re eligible for.
If you held an equivalent level of cover with your previous fund, and join HCF within 30 days of leaving, you won't have to re-serve any waiting periods, and all your remaining benefit limits will transfer across. If you're switching and upgrading your cover, you'll need to serve the necessary waiting periods for your higher entitlements.
Lifetime Health Cover (LHC) loading is a government policy designed to encourage Australians to take out private hospital cover earlier and ease pressure on the public healthcare system. If you don’t have a level hospital cover by 1 July after your 31st birthday, a loading will be added to your health insurance premium if you later decide to take out cover.
For every year you delay, your premium increases by 2% up to a maximum of 70%. For example, if you wait until 40 to take out cover, you'll pay 20% more than if you had joined at 30. The loading is payable for 10 years of continuous cover.
A pre-existing condition is an ailment, illness or condition that you had at any time in the 6 months before a health insurance policy started. The condition may not have been diagnosed by a doctor or specialist and you may not have been aware of the condition, but if signs and symptoms were present in those 6 months, the condition will likely be considered ‘pre-existing’.
This applies if you’re upgrading to a higher level of health cover, reducing your excess, adding a dependant or child to your policy (unless they’re babies added within certain timeframes) or if you’re new to private health insurance or had a gap in cover.
A waiting period of 12 months will be applied for treatment of a pre-existing condition.
Already with HCF?
If you’re looking to change your level of cover, get in touch with our team via chat and we can help you review your options.
Why Choose HCF?
We support over 2 million Australians
As Australia’s largest not-for-profit health fund, we take care of our members, paying out $3.5 billion for hospital and extras benefits**.
We give members more back
We’ve given more back in benefits to members for every dollar paid in premiums than the industry average over the last 10 years++.
We help members save more
We helped our members save $207 million on their extras’ costs** by visiting one of 12,000 participating providers in our No-Gap network.
We reward our members every day
Our HCF Thank You rewards program saved members over $6 million in everyday essentials in 2024**.
Important Information
* Australian Government Rebate has been applied if you selected an income level less than $158,001 for single or less than $316,001 for family. Price excludes any Lifetime Health Cover loading.
^ Available if you change your mind and cancel your HCF policy within 30 days of joining, and haven't made a claim in that period.
+ Members who have held a hospital cover for at least 2 months and upgrade to receive hospital benefits (or a higher level of hospital benefits) for hospital psychiatric services may elect to be exempted from the 2 month waiting period for hospital psychiatric services that usually applies to members when they upgrade their hospital cover. Members who have held a hospital cover for less than 2 months may elect to serve a reduced waiting period of 2 months minus the length of time that the member held hospital cover. This exemption or reduction can only be accessed once in a member’s lifetime.
** Sourced from HCF Year in Review Financial Year 2023-24.
++ 88.8% compared to 85.3% across the industry. Calculated based on the average of the past 10 years, sourced from APRA Statistics: Operations of Private Health Insurers Annual Report data 2014–23 and Quarterly private health insurance statistics July 2023–March 2024.
## Must visit the emergency department within 24 hours of the accident. Excludes Accident Only Basic cover. See hcf.com.au/accident-safeguard for more information.
*** Applies to children attending school, up to and including year 12. Subject to waiting periods, annual limits and other conditions. See hcf.com.au/school-accident
