Why healthcare trusts can help integrate health and wellbeing benefits
Recent years have seen benefit budgets cut or frozen with wide-scale switching of insurance schemes to the lowest annual premium, but these premiums have not been sustainable and savings are now being lost to increases at renewal.
As a result, many employers are changing their approach to health and wellbeing to allow for greater provision and more sustainable benefit packages.
However, just adding ‘off the shelf’ insurance products to current provision does not allow for optimal budget allocation and often leads to employees being lost between providers without guidance or direction.
A joined-up approach
A common example of this stacking of products, where services are often not fully utilised, is the provision of an Employee Assistance Programme (EAP).
It is not unusual for an employee to be claiming from the PMI mental health benefit when they could be utilising a 24hr telephone counselling service, or even face to face sessions, already funded through the employer’s EAP provider.
If there was a joined-up approach with the EAP and PMI provider, costs could be mitigated to reduce annual spend, but more importantly the employee would receive the most appropriate immediate care.
How can a Healthcare Trust help?
There is one obvious route to achieving a fully functioning integrated health and wellbeing strategy and that is through a Healthcare Trust.
A Healthcare Trust is truly bespoke and can accommodate most health and wellbeing benefits, as well as interacting with providers of other benefits such as EAP, GIP and health screening. They also offer significant tax efficiencies over traditional insurance products as they are not subject to IPT in the same way.
Trusts are usually administered by medical third party administrators who can act as the hub to other providers and navigate the scheme member to the most appropriate pathway or provision, taking the first call from the member and navigating appropriately from the outset.
By providing an integrated approach, Healthcare Trust providers can help ensure the most effective use of an employer’s overall health and wellbeing budget.
Richard Saunders is sales director at Healix Health Services.
This article was provided by Healix Health Services.
In partnership with Healix Health
Healix Health provides flexible, bespoke healthcare solutions an alternative to traditional private medical cover.
