Cost-cutting is a hard reality, especially in the post-pandemic era. As an employer, you want to do what is best for your employees while not losing sight of your company’s long-term goals. For your company to run smoothly and have a sustainable future, you must look at all possible ways to reduce your costs.
Your employees expect a valuable group health insurance cover from the company. You want to find the delicate balance between profitably running your company and maintaining employee satisfaction.
What’s on this page?
Here are some ways in which you can ensure low group health insurance premiums while actually increasing employee satisfaction:
The second opinion is second to none.
Employees might take the first course of treatment suggested by a doctor first approached. This could result in a high number of expensive tests especially if the prognosis is not definitive yet. In such cases, it is better to take a second opinion to have other options and make a more informed decision in terms of the treatment.
Help your employees understand the importance of getting a second opinion by providing them with informative health modules or workshops. Instead of hefty bills and high premiums, this can reduce your insurance premium. There are platforms available to obtain free second opinions from Doctors as well. Talk to your insurance broker to get more information.
Prescription drugs – Educate Employees
Over-prescription can raise your overall insurance claims cost and in turn your company’s premium cost. Ineffective and unused prescriptions can add up to high costs, and your employees might not be informed about them. In some cases, there can be cheaper alternatives to expensive drugs that are as effective. Start by educating your staff about the cost of prescription medication.
Encourage them to question their doctors more often and advise them to tell their doctors about the prescriptions they collect and don’t take.
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Single doctor – Multiple check-ups
People tend to go to doctors only when they feel ill or have symptoms that cannot be treated at home. This can add to their insurance claims as they might make multiple visits to the doctor as they charge per consultation.
Your premiums can be lowered by lowering your employees’ claim amounts. Instead of racking up separate bills with every visit to a doctor, resulting in a large sum total, they can schedule single visits to have multiple check-ups done. A full health check-up at regular intervals throughout the year can prevent illnesses before they become untreatable too.
General practitioner before specialist
Advise your employees that for minor symptoms they should consult a general practitioner first who can then decide whether the symptoms require a specialist’s eyes.
A general misconception prevails that specialists have more in-depth knowledge of medical sciences than general practitioners, which is false. A general practitioner is knowledgeable enough to correctly diagnose symptoms and charge a much lower fee. Encouraging the habit of visiting a general practitioner can reduce the cost of insurance claims filed by your employees.
Medicinal treatment instead of surgeries
Specialists can suggest high-end surgeries to shorten the recovery period from a grievous illness. However, expensive surgeries can lead to higher claims by the employee. More importantly, surgeries are not always successful and sometimes lead to post-surgery complications as well. To reduce the cost of claims and prevent surgeries to the extent possible, educate your employees on getting second opinions when their doctors suggest surgeries. Medicinal or other non-surgical treatments can prove to be better alternatives for surgery and also help reduce the claim cost.
Alternate medicine is also emerging fast to be a credible option. The government of India also has been promoting Ayush to obtain medical treatment without side effects and at affordable costs.
Prevention is cheaper than cure
As an employer, you can ensure that healthy habits are a part of your employees’ office routine to prevent health risks and illnesses. You can add and make changes to their office environment to achieve this. You can provide healthy and affordable food at cafeterias, workshops on healthy food habits, workshops for exercise, or discounted gym membership. It can be beneficial for you to include your employees’ dependants in your health and wellness programs and dependant claims are generally higher than employee claims.
Create engaging programs to improve fitness and health conditions. This takes care of their health, insurance premium optimization, increased engagement and satisfaction, and a host of other benefits of health insurance.
With the sky-rocketing costs of group health insurance, as an employer, you cannot help but look for ways to reduce your premium cost, in turn reducing your overall cost of running the company. It is prudent to look at steps to cut costs as in the end, profitable.
