Friday, September 14, 2012

The Basics of Business Health Insurance

Business health insurance is taken out to give private organisations' employees medical care when they most need it. You will gain private treatment by qualified doctors, ensuring that your employees are back and fit for work as soon as possible. Insurers will typically offer a range of over 250 hospitals spread across the nation, so there will always be a centre that you can get an employee to in a situation that requires it.

Health insurance is one of the benefits that is most sought-after by employees, meaning that your business will stand out amongst the crowd as championing the health of their employees. In the 21st century, healthiness is extremely valued by everyone, and having private insurance has been linked to helping to increase the productivity of workers.

Although still relatively underutilised in the UK, health insurance has been around for a significant number of years. The growth in businesses that purchase private insurance has led to an increase in optional additions to policies, such as having a private health advice phone number and even cancer support and gym membership.

The cover that you get as standard, will change depending on which insurer you go with, and the price that you pay for the insurance. You can expect in-patient and out-patient care as standard, where the company will pay for accommodation and medical fees, as well as diagnosis tests and x-rays. You may find that policies on the lower end of the spectrum limit the amount they will pay for out-patient care, but higher-end policies will usually pay in full.

Support for employees that have been diagnosed with cancer will be an attractive benefit of some insurers, as it is the time in an employee's life that they are most vulnerable. Most insurers have specialist teams that deal with cancer patients, but you will need to check whether cancer care is included in your policy. You may also wish to see if there are other benefits, such as long-term psychiatric care.

Premiums work in the same way with business health insurance as they do in other types of insurance. An excess will keep the cost of the insurance low, but the individual will be required to pay an excess for every claim that they make; excesses can be very high and even unaffordable for some employees (up to £500), so you should make sure that you know how large the excess is.

The reason for most companies purchasing private health cover is to make sure that their employees are back to work as fast as possible. The way that most insurers work is to compare the time that they can treat the patient in compared to the NHS - if the NHS waiting list for treatment is longer than a six week period, private cover will be paid for instead.

In the UK, health insurance works in conjunction with the NHS. GP services and emergencies are typically not covered by insurers, so employees should not expect to never use the NHS again.