Acute condition
A condition that starts suddenly and is expected to respond to treatment and resolve.
Private medical insurance is built around acute conditions: problems that begin after the policy starts and that treatment is expected to put right. Insurers contrast this with a chronic condition, which needs ongoing management rather than a course of treatment with an end point. The distinction matters because most policies fund the first and exclude the second, and because a condition can move from one category to the other over time. Your policy wording, not the brochure, sets out how your insurer defines it.
