How to provide affordable medical support for lower paid employees
While many companies provide private medical insurance (PMI) or similar benefits for their workforces, up to nine in 10 employees still rely on the NHS as their primary source of medical support – even if the company health plan is available to all.
One reason for this is that the high cost of providing funded medical support for all employees prompts many employers to ask those who benefit to pay an excess as they would if they made a car or home insurance claim.
The result is a two-tier system, despite a whole-of-workforce scheme.
The challenge: balancing affordability
Electing to offer PMI to all employees seems like a good way to ensure fairness for workers at all levels.
But, unfortunately, if that means charging an excess, lower paid employees remain unlikely to take advantage of the scheme. That is also likely to further divide the workforce by driving resentment in some and despondency in others.
As Bruce Eaton, director at digital health solution specialist Medipartner, points out: “If an employee seeking to access medical support receives an upfront bill of around £100 to £250, this can lead to many electing to stay with the NHS and finding themselves waiting anyway, negating the cost of providing the scheme in the first place.”
This is particularly true once you take P11D benefit-in-kind tax deductions into account too.
The excess trap
“In many cases, excesses apply after employees have already seen the medical support plan make a dent in their take-home pay,” Eaton adds.
“For example, where a premium is around £800, the lower-paid employee will have paid about £160 in tax over the year plus the excess before they see any advantage from the plan – a bill that could be as high as £410.
“Taxes are unavoidable, but many plans do not take the cumulative effect of these plus the excess into account, which diminishes the purpose of the plan – even before other cost-mitigating measures such as exclusions for pre-existing medical conditions.”
So, how can employers meet the challenge of balancing the medical support funding pot while meeting the needs of all workers, including those on lower incomes?
The solution: a multi-dimensional approach
Planning a health strategy that brings together different threads such as physical wellbeing, health screening and mental health support isn’t easy.
But to beat a multi-dimensional challenge, you need a multi-pronged approach that tackles affordability from a variety of angles.
Encouraging colleagues to be health-aware, for example, is key to keeping PMI claims – and therefore costs – down.
“There are lots of low-cost digital solutions available that can help to raise general health awareness and identify symptoms before they present,” Eaton says.
“These include virtual general health screening, mole and skin cancer screening, eye screening and dentistry.”
Accessible support
However, to maximise the impact of such initiatives, they must be backed up by accessible support for those who need it, whether that be counselling or surgery.
It’s therefore well worth seeking out benefits technology that also does the heavy lifting involved in joining together the different strings of your health strategy – allowing you to focus on helping colleagues instead.
Another option for employers keen to fund medical support for a wider cohort without breaking the bank is to provide assistance for those with common complaints such as mental and musculoskeletal health problems, which together represent the highest incidence of workforce health issues, rather than PMI.
Between £1 and £2 per employee per month, for example, could fund a nurse support service designed to guide employees with a medical issue through the systems available in the UK.
And for between £1 and £4 per month, employees could benefit from remote mental health and musculoskeletal health triage and self-management aid designed to accelerate the path to diagnosis and recovery.
Employers prepared to pay between £3 and £6 per employee per month, meanwhile, could offer these services alongside further musculoskeletal and mental health case management across both the NHS and the private sector, with face-to-face support available.
“All of above go some way towards providing swift access when symptoms present, which will in time impact absence levels and recovery rates,” Eaton adds.
“The resulting savings should make it easier for employers to afford whole-of-workforce medical support schemes that include all employees, regardless of pay grade.”
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