India: A Healthy Workforce - Caring for your Employees Through a Holistic Approach
Companies are now highly aware of the importance of caring for their employees through a holistic approach. This can be achieved not only through meaningful benefits but also through enhanced policies, manager support programs, SOPs to ensure health & safety, employee engagement and a conducive organizational culture.
The Indian market is in its nascent stage of integrating health programs and coverage under insurance plans. However, there has been some incentivization (reduced premium, redeemable health points, etc.) introduced to insurance policies for healthy behavior and the betterment of health scores. The Indian Regulator also issued guidelines in September 2020 on the inclusion of wellness rewards such as discounted services on OPD, health check-ups and redeemable vouchers on fitness centers in the health insurance policies. Overall, while the market is moving in the right direction, there are still gaps that need to be addressed and opportunities to be tapped.
In Focus: OPD
Outpatient care and out-of-pocket expense account for around 60% of the total healthcare expenditure today in India. Not every injury or illness requires hospitalization. Many chronic conditions as well such as diabetes, hypertension require frequent doctor visits, lab tests, medicines to keep it under control. These typically do not require hospitalization but lead to high recurring medical costs, especially for chronic diseases.
The previous year also saw a change in healthcare utilization behavior, mainly driven by the need to reduce health risk exposure. Many avoided or deferred unwanted admissions to hospitals, leading to increasing Outpatient Department (OPD) utilization for most of their medical needs and thereby increasing OPD insurance costs.
As a result, OPD insurance programs are gaining traction since they offer complete coverage against medical expenses outside of a hospital stay for employees and their dependents. Furthermore, there are many viable value propositions available in the market with plans that include vaccinations, diagnostics, doctor consultations, health check-ups, dental and vision coverages and medicines.
With the given shift in healthcare utilization and behavior, it is imperative for OPD benefit to be a strong valuable proposition. Hence, companies that can offer meaningful benefits such as OPD demonstrate they truly care about their employees’ health and wellbeing along with driving positive business outcomes.
To help our clients provide holistic care for their employees, MMB India is collaborating with insurers and working towards curating Outpatient Department (OPD) insurance solutions that will have elements of wellness features such as consultations, diagnostics, vaccinations, health check-ups etc. included in the policy.
Some of the key highlights of OPD solutions include coverage for the Covid-19 vaccination, paperless claims transaction, a wide network of cashless facilities and discounted services. These solutions are highly customizable for differing employer needs and clients can choose among various sum insured options, family definition, coverage parameters, payment mode etc.
Get in touch to find out more.