It has been a terrible two years with Covid, riots, floods, increasing fuel and food costs… and now our medical aid premiums have increased as well. As a result, several of our staff could no longer afford the cost of a comprehensive medical aid. I decided to try and find the best product that not only helped our staff and our business, but also provided a practical solution that eliminated the need for them to wait for hours at their local clinic, whether to get treatment or to collect their monthly chronic medication.
After thoroughly assessing the market, a Momentum product called Health4Me ticked almost all the boxes for our staff. We’ve been using it for the past two and a half years, and it’s resulted in improved staff wellness and helped many of our employees with chronic conditions.
From an administrative perspective, there is a user-friendly portal to manage the monthly contributions and the balancing to payroll and debit order, a process which HRTorQue could quickly and easily manage for you as well.
Here is a quick product overview:
On the Gold Standard package (which HRTorQue subscribes to), employees get the following day-to-day benefits:
- Access to a GP, which in our case is only 1km from our office. When the onboarding is done the service provider locates a GP that is easily accessible and suitable for your staff. Alternatively, employees locate their nearest GP from the service provider list.
- Access to an online 24/7 “Hello Doctor” app/service
- Access to specialists when referred
- Acute medication
- Chronic medication (which gets delivered to our office monthly from a pharmacy)
- HIV benefits
- Covid-19 screening
- Basic pathology
- Basic radiology
- Maternity benefits
- Flu vaccinations
- Health assessments
- Employee assistant programme
To give you an idea of cost, here are some real-life examples.
One of my staff members is a single mother with two children. Her premium is R600 a month for this day-to-day cover. Another staff member has her husband, two children and herself on day-to-day cover at a cost of R900 a month, while a single member costs R300 a month.
Then, there is optional insurance cover for major medical events, such as accident and emergency cover, hospital cash and maternity lump-sum benefits, and funeral benefits. These premiums are also very reasonable.
If members have regular health check-ups and maintain their healthy heart score, they get benefits from the More4Me rewards programme. These benefits include the accrual of monthly airtime or data to their cell phones, or a grocery voucher from Checkers.
This product has made a significant difference in the lives of our employees. We have an annual wellness day, and our Momentum representative updates our staff annually on the product rules and benefits. This ensures that we get the maximum benefit for our contributions.
As we’re always looking for ways to improve our services and solutions, and the fact that we get so many queries in this space, we have asked Momentum to provide a resource to share the product with our clients. Our Momentum Health4Me client liaison is always happy to arrange a Teams or Zoom meeting to explain the product to a group, while our roll-out team in Durban can also assist. We have Zulu speakers in our team to support clients where English is not the group’s first language.
We’re incredibly excited about this product! If you feel it could be a solution to your employees’ challenges in the medical services space, please contact us for more information.