Medicash Corporate Health Plans
Medicash has introduced a number of enhancements to its corporate health plans. This follows a survey of 1,000 corporate decision-makers, intermediaries and policyholders which revealed that optical and dental benefits continue to be the main appeal of cash plans.
Medicash’s optical and dental benefits have both been increased to £70 on level 1 of the Proactive plan. The level of chiropody benefits has also increased, from £20 to £50 on level 1 plans, without no change to the price.
The virtual GP service has also been extended, to include free unlimited virtual GP consultations for all employees on Proactive and Plus health plans.
The Plus version now has discounted health club membership and the Best Doctors InterConsultation second medical opinions service across all levels.
Medicash Plus still costs just 95p a week per employee, with Medicash Proactive at £1 per employee, per week for groups of 25+. Medicash Proactive is available for groups of 10-24, starting at £1.15 per employee, a week.
The plan provider has also added a Mindfulness Zone to its app, giving access to guided meditations, breathing exercises, mental wellbeing and nutritional advice.
From 1 November 2019, Medicash has also announced it has changed its employee assistance programme (EAP) provider to Care First. The Woebot app has been added for all policyholders who have access to the full EAP. This app helps those with mental health conditions such as anxiety and depression, and runs on an artificial intelligence platform offering real-time emotional support to employees. Allowing users to track their mood and identify emotional patterns, it can help with financial worries, relationship problems, chronic pain, sleep or insomnia issues, loneliness, grief or addiction, while also connecting users to a trained human counsellor when additional support is required.
Comment: Medicash has updated its corporate plans, taking account of what customers said they wanted. HCPs continue to provide useful benefits at very low cost – making them suitable for all employees, not just higher paid ones.
These changes are not revolutionary – but then they probably don’t need to be.
Plus points: Consumer research-led improvements to cover; Very low cost; Can be offered to more or all employees; Some useful non-traditional benefits too, such as Best Doctor services.
Not so plus points: Many brokers do not market HCPs; Providers have struggled to get employees to pay more than minimum contributions on many schemes.
Website: www.medicash.org
Rating (max 10): Overall: 8. Gold
Tags: HCP; Medicash