Telemedicine Benefits Make Coverage Worth it To Employers
Incorporating telemedicine into your employer benefits package is a big win for you and your employees. Telemedicine benefits increase employee satisfaction and reduce health costs at the same time.
There are millions of patients that use telemedicine – the use of telecommunication and information technology to provide health care from a distance. It’s a well-established mechanism by which individual employees and their families can enjoy and appreciate what their employer offers in benefits. After all, time is money. While the program performs well for individuals and families, the company also benefits because employees spend less time away from work for medical care provider visits.
Millennials make up the largest segment of applicant pools today. This demographic of employees tend to appreciate services that accommodate their schedules, rather than being restricted by the time constraints of traditional medical office visits.
Offering telemedicine plans to your employees directly affects your bottom line.
Telemedicine enables employees to have less visits to healthcare providers, emergency rooms and specialists. This, in turn, could help position the employer to be eligible for reduced rates in the future. For certain types of plans, insurers determine rates they will offer your business by looking at several factors from one year to the next, for example:
- Number of visits to healthcare providers in previous years.
- The age of plan participants.
- Visits to hospital emergency rooms.
By enabling employees to use telemedicine benefits for multiple years, the employer can then track and see an increased number of work hours amongst employees. Then in subsequent years, they may also enjoy reduced insurance costs because the demographics that play into insurance rates may have improved during those years as well.
Benefits affect what applicants and employees say about the company.
Positive employee morale makes the work day easier and can reduce turnover. When employees have positive telemedicine experiences, it helps spread the word that your company is offering reliable, worthwhile benefits to staff. For example, when an employee is:
- On vacation out of town and receiving a consultation or antibiotics by internet.
- At a kid’s soccer tournament for hours on end and they can get their own medical consultation by phone.
- Working from home with sick children in bed and they can access a medical professional such as a nurse practitioner without leaving home.
Globally telemedicine means better access to care.
Remote workforces require health care options that don’t create an inability to enjoy the benefit if they travel for work or live in different locations throughout the year for weeks at a time. In this way, telemedicine is a tool that helps recruit and retain top talent.
Contact BenefEx today to help determine if telemedicine should be seriously considered as part of a cost-wise, employee-centric benefits package that meets the needs of your company.