Your IndustryAug 5 2015

Types of medical assistance offered

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Many companies offer some form of rehabilitation benefit to assist a quicker return to work.

Deepak Jobanputra, deputy chief executive of Vitality Life, says his company offers medical support to income protection customers that fall into three broad categories.

Firstly, he says ‘prevention is better than cure’ so Vitality Life offers rewards and incentives designed to help customers get healthy and therefore save money, ultimately reducing the risk of illness/incapacity to start with.

Secondly, Mr Jobanputra says claimants are offered up to £2,000 of specialist care and support, to help them get better or make their life easier.

This can be used at the claimant’s discretion to contribute towards medical support or therapy, assisted care or educational support to help them back to work.

Thirdly, Mr Jobanputra says to help people back into work they are given a continuing benefit payment on top of their normal salary after they start working again following a claim thereby providing an incentive to ease back into work.

In terms of the different suppliers of medical assistance Alan Lakey, director of CI Expert, says Best Doctors is offered by AIG and Friends Life, and various Red Arc options are available from numerous insurers.

The Best Doctors service includes Doctor Online, which allows members to send medical questions, simply and confidentially, to an approved GP via a secure online portal. Through the Doctor Online service members will receive personalised answers to non-urgent medical questions within 72 hours.

All of the doctors are UK-based and according to the service’s operator have been carefully selected to ensure they give the most reliable and up-to-date medical information.

They are able to provide advice if a member has a medical question that is worrying them, or simply if they would like some reassurance about something their own doctor has discussed with them.

Doctor Online is intended to provide useful general information on health care issues related to different specialties.

Anna Spender, head of group protection proposition at Friends Life, says Doctor Online is not designed to replace visiting your GP but it should offer members a convenient way of getting some peace of mind about a medical issue that has been worrying them.

For businesses, she says it means employees could avoid taking time off work to visit their GP because they can get advice sent straight to their inbox.

Christine Husband, managing director of Red Arc, says advisers will find that, while there are several added value services in the medical area offered by income protection providers these days, the level of assistance offers ranges from a simple helpline to counselling services to second medical opinions.

Ms Husband says her own company even offers a personal nurse adviser service and it is therefore vital that advisers grasp just how much help a medical assistance bolt on will offer your clients.

She says: “Red Arc’s team of qualified personal nurse advisers provide tailored support to each individual according to their own individual circumstances.

“No other service is available on an indefinite basis – there are no limits on how many phone calls people can have, how often or over what time period.

“Over 33 per cent of customers use the service for more than one year, 15 per cent for more than two years and some receive support for more than five years.”

Other services currently bolted on to income protection policies in 2015 include Exeter Friendly’s GP helpline, which is a 24 hours a day, seven days a week service offering advice and guidance.

CI Expert’s Mr Lakey another feature to look out for from many insurers these days is hospitalisation benefit, which provides an income after seven days hospitalisation.

He says a key thing for advisers to be aware of with these benefits is whether they are integral to policies or offered as an optional extra such as fracture cover with Friends Life.

Red Arc’s Ms Husband says most insurers do not include her company’s service within the policy terms and conditions, but do make it available to all customers as an integral part of the proposition.

Good examples are Bright Grey, Aviva and Canada Life.

In short, she says advisers should view these features not as a bolt-on but as an added value services that insurers have chosen to provide in order to improve the customer experience.

Ms Husband says: “This is certainly my experience with insurers that Red Arc works with.”