Future of workplace health provision: making the treatment fit the employee

Everyone appreciates the chance to make their own choices in life – especially when it comes to something as important as healthcare. But equally, we need assurance that we’re choosing from suitable options in the first place.

This notion of choosing from nothing but good alternatives is at the heart of quality guiding. It’s very much an idea ripe for today – not just because it has helped us to meet the challenges of the pandemic, but also because it’s so appropriate to the future direction of healthcare choice.

Covid-19 has changed the certainty and fixed nature of a hospital list. We’ve seen consultations taking place digitally. We’ve seen some hospital providers re-purposing their gyms and clinics as chemotherapy day units just to keep services running. And we’ve seen the acceleration of care being delivered as part of a digitally connected community, or ‘hospital without walls’.

The guiding factor in all of these responses has been delivering the best care possible for the patient. That care may not be delivered in the expected location, or through anticipated channels. It’s the outcome that matters most, not the route taken to get there. And in this we begin to see how principles of future healthcare provision may need to evolve in the post-pandemic world.

As healthcare becomes more complex, it’s surely within the remit of the employee benefits provider to help employees covered on a company private healthcare scheme find their way through the various routes open to them. In short, to be a commissioner for care, not just a payer of bills.

Guiding – the future of healthcare provision

Adopting a guided approach means that there’s no need to spend time searching for hospitals or facilities your employees might need access to, and then trying to pick a list that might cater to future healthcare needs. Throughout the pandemic, healthcare providers collated more data to refine their systems. This has happened partly because the situation was changing rapidly, and partly because customers expected their provider to know what was open and available.

At Aviva, we see this need continuing as more patients come to us with an open referral rather than being referred to a single, named consultant or specific hospital. We anticipate that guiding them to a suitable treatment facility will become the default expectation underpinning their interaction with us.

Most corporate customers expect choice when buying private medical insurance (PMI), but that choice has to be based on information that’s both up to date and relevant. Covid-19 has emphasised the need for insurers to share information on availability and access, as well as bespoke options, for employees covered on a private healthcare scheme. Quality guiding evolves the customer experience. It ensures that the choice being offered is between hospitals and specialists who are best suited to manage the specific clinical condition affecting each individual employee.

Through Covid, we saw different permutations and combinations of specialists and facilities being used, all organised to serve the patient’s best interest. We saw specialists start consultations remotely and then proceed to treatment in a facility that perhaps they had not previously worked at. This was a practical demonstration of the hybrid model of care which points the way forward for healthcare provision.

The author is Dr Subashini M, associate medical director at Aviva UK Health and Protection.

This article is provided by Aviva UK Health and Protection.