AXA Health Recognition for Therapists: The Application Step by Step

AXA Health publishes recognition criteria for 20 specialties and routes every individual application through the Healthcode Private Practice Register. Physiotherapists, osteopaths and chiropractors need at least one year of full registration before they can apply. Dietitians, psychologists, speech therapists and orthoptists need no minimum period at all. And every applicant accepts a Fee Approved Practitioner Agreement at the same moment, which for most allied health professions commits you to an average of 5.5 sessions per patient per condition.

The criteria are the part everyone reads. The agreement is the part that decides whether the work is worth having, and it is a different agreement for each profession.

This is what AXA Health publishes, profession by profession, as at 9 October 2026. Insurer terms change without announcement, so read the current documents on AXA's own site before you apply.

What does AXA Health actually recognise?

Twenty specialties, listed on one page. AXA is unambiguous about what absence from that list means:

If your specialty is not listed, this means we are not currently accepting applications in your area of medicine.

Mapped against the professions an allied health practice is likely to run, the list looks like this.

Two rows on that table are worth stopping at, because they are where applications get wasted.

Sports medicine is not sports therapy. AXA's sports medicine criteria require full GMC registration, a UK MSc or Diploma in Sports and Exercise Medicine, and a place on the GMC Specialist Register. That is a doctor. A sports therapist, however well qualified, is not applying for that specialty and should not spend an afternoon trying.

Podiatry is recognised only at podiatric surgeon level, and even then AXA publishes a defined table of 67 procedure codes it will cover, split into outpatient-only and day-patient procedures. Routine chiropody and podiatry outside those codes is not AXA work.

If your profession is not on the list, the realistic third-party income route is a health cash plan rather than full private medical insurance, and the accreditations those plans accept are a different and generally broader set.

What does AXA require of almost every therapist?

Strip out the specialty-specific clauses and AXA asks nearly everyone for the same four things.

1. Full registration with the relevant regulator. HCPC for physiotherapy, dietetics, psychology, speech and language therapy, orthoptics and podiatry; the General Chiropractic Council for chiropractic; the General Osteopathic Council for osteopathy.
2. A clean record with that regulator. The published wording is "have a clean record with the HCPC", and the equivalent for the GCC and GOsC. For specialties assessed against the GMC the wording changes to a practice "not subject to any special conditions, restrictions, warnings or a requirement for supervision or further training".
3. Current professional indemnity insurance for the treatments you provide. AXA sets no published minimum limit of indemnity for therapists, unlike some networks, but the practitioner agreement requires you to produce evidence before you start and at least annually thereafter, and to tell AXA immediately if anything threatens your cover. If you have not reviewed yours recently, our comparison of professional indemnity providers is the place to start.
4. Electronic invoicing. You must "submit all invoices electronically through Healthcode or any other electronic billing system that AXA Health recognises". This appears in every single specialty's criteria without exception.

Note what is absent. AXA's published criteria for therapists name no DBS requirement, no minimum turnover, no run-off insurance period and no requirement to hold an NHS post, for the allied health specialties at least. Several of those are standard elsewhere, which is why practitioners arrive expecting a higher bar than AXA actually sets.

The one-year rule, and who it does not apply to

This is the single most common reason a newly qualified therapist is turned down, and it only affects three professions.

A physiotherapist eight months into registration is not eligible and no amount of evidence changes that. A dietitian eight months into registration is, on AXA's published wording. The asymmetry is odd and it is not explained anywhere, but it is what the criteria say.

The practical response for the three professions with the bar is the dull one: build self-pay for the first year, apply on the anniversary. Our piece on osteopathy and insurer recognition works through the same problem from the osteopath's side.

Which professions have extra conditions?

Medical acupuncturist. AXA's wording is "have full registration with one of the following bodies", and then lists full GMC registration or membership of the British Acupuncture Council. Read as published, that is an either/or, which makes AXA one of the few private medical insurers where a traditional acupuncturist who is not a doctor has a published route. Because the heading says "full registration" and BAcC membership is not registration in the statutory sense, this is worth confirming with AXA in writing before you build a plan on it.

Podiatric surgeon. The longest list on the page. Full HCPC registration, a clean HCPC record, a Fellowship in Podiatric Surgery (FCPodS), a place on the approved list of the Society of Chiropodists and Podiatrists, a substantive post as a consultant podiatrist or consultant in podiatric surgery in the NHS, and practising privileges at a hospital in AXA's directory. The NHS post requirement is the one that makes this effectively a hospital-based specialty.

Psychotherapist, child or adult. No regulator, because psychotherapy has no statutory one. Instead AXA accepts one of four accreditations: full accredited membership of the British Association for Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapies (BABCP), full accredited membership of the UK Council for Psychotherapy (UKCP), full accredited registered membership of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP), or full membership of the Association of Child Psychotherapists (ACP) with at least five years post-qualification experience and a post held at Grade 8A as a child psychotherapist in the NHS. A counsellor with accredited BACP registration therefore has a route; a counsellor without it does not.

Audiologist. Registration with the Registration Council for Clinical Physiologists (RCCP/AHCS), plus having held a substantive NHS appointment in the specialty. The NHS requirement makes audiology closer to the consultant specialties than to the therapy ones.

For psychologists specifically, our comparison of psychology panel requirements goes into more detail on how the published bars differ between insurers.

The application, step by step

1. Check your specialty is on the live list. It changes. A colleague's experience from two years ago is not evidence of today's position.
2. Read your specialty's two documents. Each entry carries its own Terms of Recognition and its own contract, labelled Practitioner Agreement, Therapist Agreement or Specialist Agreement depending on the profession. They are not interchangeable and the differences are not cosmetic.
3. Get your Private Practice Register profile to 100%. Every mandatory section complete, indemnity certificate uploaded, bank and billing addresses correct. An incomplete profile is not visible to insurers. We cover what the register holds and what it costs in what Healthcode actually is.
4. In the Insurer Recognition section, confirm you will work to AXA's fee schedule. AXA only recognises practitioners who will.
5. Click Apply next to AXA Health. Your status moves to Pending.
6. Tick the acceptance box. In doing so you are confirming five separate things: that you will tell AXA promptly about any disciplinary action by a regulator or employer and about any change to admitting privileges; that you have read and agreed to the terms of recognition, published fees and specialist agreement "including but not limited to the limit on fees"; that non-compliance means recognition is refused or withdrawn; that AXA may revoke recognition at any time at its sole discretion; and that everything in the application is true.
7. Wait. AXA publishes no timescale and neither does Healthcode. The status changes to Recognised, or it does not.
8. Register for electronic billing if you have not already, because you cannot invoice AXA any other way.

What are you actually signing?

The criteria take an hour. The agreement lasts for as long as the relationship does, and it runs from the completion date "unless terminated". Here is what is in it, taken from AXA's own Fee Approved Practitioner Agreements, all dated October 2020.

A session average per condition. The agreement for physiotherapists, osteopaths and chiropractors obliges the practitioner "to provide an average of 5.5 sessions per Member for the Treatment of each Medical Condition". The same 5.5 figure appears in the agreement covering audiologists, dieticians, orthoptists, speech therapists, medical homeopaths and medical acupuncturists, and in the podiatric surgeon agreement. The psychologist and psychotherapist agreement sets a different number: "when providing Psychological Therapy, to provide an average of 10 Psychological Therapy sessions per Member for the Treatment of each Medical Condition."

It is an average across your AXA caseload, not a cap on any one patient. Two long rehabilitation episodes have to be balanced by shorter ones. AXA's terms of recognition frame the same figure as an observation rather than a target, saying "our claims history shows that patients generally receive an average of 5.5 sessions with a Practitioner for each medical condition", and asking you to consider it "in line with your clinical governance arrangements". The contract states it as an obligation.

A six-month invoicing window. Invoices, and where needed completed AXA claim forms signed by the member and the supervising practitioner or referring GP, must be submitted "within six months of the commencement of Treatment". Not within six months of the final session. From the start of the episode.

No top-ups. You charge in accordance with AXA's Schedule of Procedures and Fees, and "no other charges will be made to Members". The exceptions are narrow and specific: costs the policy does not cover, including the policy excess or cost sharing; any shortfall between what the policy pays and what the agreement permits you to charge; and reasonable cancellation or non-attendance charges under a written policy the patient had notice of, unless the cancellation was your doing. Even when charging the patient directly in those cases, you still apply AXA's rates.

A clawback at 125%. If you charge a member more than the Schedule allows, or AXA pays you for something ineligible, AXA "reserves the right to clawback a sum equal to 125% of all such amounts" and to set it off against future fees.

An on-site audit right. AXA or its representatives "may visit any premises of the Practitioner and carry out an audit", and you must co-operate fully "at its own cost and expense". The terms of recognition add that AXA audits medical notes as part of quality control, and that recognised practitioners must provide them on receipt of a signed consent letter from the member. AXA also states it monitors claims using data mining software.

Payment monthly. AXA reimburses "on a monthly basis", with a remittance advice breaking down what was paid, which members it relates to and any shortfalls such as an excess. The patient gets a matching benefit statement telling them what they owe and who to pay, using the billing address from your Private Practice Register profile. If you put a home address there, that is the address patients get.

Three months' notice either way. Either party can end the agreement on at least three months' written notice, or immediately for an unremedied material breach. AXA can terminate immediately for a breach of the obligations clause.

A 30-day cure period and a 24-hour data clock. A remediable breach must be put right within 30 days of written notice, or the agreement can be terminated immediately. Separately, the terms of recognition require you to notify AXA within 24 hours of any personal data breach involving the shared data, or of a data subject exercising their rights in relation to it.

None of this is unusual for insurer work. All of it is invisible if you only read the criteria page.

Can you charge the patient the difference?

No, with one historical exception that will not apply to you.

AXA states that "specialists recognised after 2008 accept our fees as full reimbursement" and that a very small number recognised before 2008 charge more, which leaves their patients paying the gap. If you are applying now you are in the first group.

The patient's excess is a different matter. That is theirs to pay and yours to collect, and it is the single most commonly missed piece of income in insured work, because nothing in the insurer's payment run flags it to you except a line on the remittance advice.

Is the fee schedule worth it?

That depends entirely on whether the slot would otherwise be empty.

AXA's rates are published in its Schedule of Procedures and Fees, which is built on CCSD codes and sits behind a provider login. If you have not worked with those codes before, how CCSD codes work explains why the same code pays differently at different insurers.

Because that schedule is gated, the nearest public benchmark for an insurer therapy rate comes from a competitor. Vitality publishes a flat fee per therapy per session, and on 9 October 2026 it listed physiotherapy at £35, acupuncture at £35, chiropractic and osteopathy at £45, orthoptic at £45, dietitian at £50, podiatry at £55, occupational therapy at £60, audiology and speech therapy at £70 and psychology at £80.

Those are Vitality's numbers and not AXA's, and nothing here suggests the two schedules match. What they give you is an order of magnitude to test your own arithmetic against before you spend an afternoon on an application. If a published insurer therapy fee somewhere between £35 and £80 a session would not work in your diary at the volume you expect, AXA's schedule is unlikely to be the one that changes the answer. The published figures are also a reminder that the gap between disciplines is wide, so a clinic hosting several professions should not assume one rate decision covers them all.

The arithmetic that matters is marginal, not average. An insured patient in a slot that would otherwise have gone unsold earns you the whole fee. An insured patient in a slot a self-payer would have taken earns you only the difference between the two rates, which on most therapy schedules is negative. Recognition pays for filling gaps, and it costs you money if it displaces full-rate work. Before applying, look at your actual diary utilisation rather than your instinct about how busy you are.

The second cost is administrative. A 5.5 session average you have to be able to evidence, a six-month invoicing window, an audit right over your notes and an excess you collect yourself are all real work. They are manageable work if your records already carry the authorisation, the sessions used and the outcome data. They are not manageable work if the answer to "how many sessions did that patient have for that condition" lives in your head.

Where this does not apply

If you already hold group or facility recognition. AXA runs separate routes for groups and for hospitals and facilities, with their own criteria and application forms. An individual working inside a recognised group may be covered by the group's arrangement rather than needing individual recognition, and the two should not be applied for blindly in parallel.

If you work through a managed clinical network. Where a network routes the patient and pays you, your contract is with the network and its rate, not with AXA's schedule.

If your income is mostly medico-legal, occupational health or corporate. None of that is insured outpatient treatment, and recognition does nothing for it.

If you are reading this more than a few months after publication. AXA's criteria page is live and changes without notice, and the agreements quoted here are dated October 2020. Check the current versions.

What to have in place before the first AXA patient arrives

• The provider number AXA issues you, recorded where your invoices are raised
• The authorisation number for each patient, and the number of sessions authorised
• A running count of sessions used against that authorisation
• The excess, recorded as the patient's to pay, so it does not vanish into the remittance
• A note standard that shows clinical reasoning and a discharge decision, because that is the evidence base for a session average above 5.5
• An invoice out of the door well inside six months of the first appointment, not the last

Atlacare holds insurance authorisations against the patient record with the provider, authorisation number, sessions authorised, sessions used and the excess, alongside the clinical notes and the invoice. It does not submit to Healthcode, so electronic billing stays with Healthcode's own service or another system AXA recognises. What it does remove is the position where a query six months old can only be answered from memory. The free plan covers a solo practitioner with no card, and the pricing page sets out what each tier includes.

Frequently asked questions

Does AXA require a DBS check for therapists?

Not in its published criteria for any of the therapy specialties. Several other networks do, which is why practitioners often assume AXA does too. Having a current enhanced certificate is sensible regardless, and the Private Practice Register has a field for it.

How long does AXA recognition take?

AXA does not publish a timescale. The status in the Private Practice Register moves from Pending to Recognised. The variable you control is whether your profile is complete when you apply.

Can I apply to AXA without using Healthcode?

No. AXA's recognition page directs applicants to the Private Practice Register, and every specialty's criteria require electronic invoicing through Healthcode or another system AXA recognises.

I am a sports therapist. Is there any AXA route?

Not through individual provider recognition as published. "Sports medicine" on AXA's list requires full GMC registration and a place on the Specialist Register. Working as an associate inside a recognised physiotherapy practice, or building cash plan recognition instead, are the realistic alternatives.

I am a counsellor, not a psychotherapist. Can I apply?

Only if you hold full accredited registered membership of the BACP, which is one of the four accreditations AXA accepts under the psychotherapist specialty. Ordinary membership is not the same thing as accredited registered membership.

What happens if my average goes above 5.5 sessions?

The agreement states the obligation; it does not set out an automatic penalty. What AXA does have is an audit right over your notes and your billing, and a general right to withdraw recognition at its discretion. The defensible position is records that show reasoning, measured progress and a discharge decision for the longer episodes.

Is AXA recognition transferable if I move practice?

Your recognition is individual, but your addresses are not. The practitioner agreement requires you to keep your correspondence address, treatment address, billing address, email, phone numbers, admitting rights, specialty and indemnity details accurate at all times, and to update them through the Private Practice Register. Move premises without updating it and your remittances, and your patients' shortfall letters, go to the old address.

Criteria, quoted wording and figures taken on 9 October 2026 from AXA Health's published provider pages and contract documents. The Fee Approved Practitioner Agreements quoted are dated October 2020 and the terms of recognition April 2021; AXA states that its terms are reviewed regularly and subject to change. This is a description of published commercial terms, not legal or financial advice. Read the current documents and take your own advice before signing anything.

Sources: Vitality therapist hub for the published comparison fees, read 9 October 2026 · AXA Health individual provider recognition · AXA Health terms of recognition, physiotherapists, osteopaths and chiropractors · AXA Health Fee Approved Practitioner Agreement, physiotherapists, osteopaths and chiropractors · AXA Health Schedule of Procedures and Fees · AXA Health podiatry treatments covered

Related: What Healthcode actually is, and whether you need it · Do private insurers cover osteopathy, and how do you get recognised? · How do you get on insurance panels like Bupa and AXA as a psychologist? · How do CCSD codes work for private insurance billing?