Are you currently thinking of starting a health insurance scheme for your employees? Many employers spend hours agonizing over what they need to consider when evaluating health insurance companies to provide a medical benefits for their employees. If you think about it, this decision usually boils down to four main issues.
1. What standard of care do you want to provide your employees?
In the Kenyan healthcare sector, one of the main differentiators among providers is standard of care they offer. The market, while mostly open to high-end clients, has various categories. Most health insurancecompanies have different products to cater for different market segments. What you need to make up your mind about is the level of care you want to provide for your employees. Many companies use a tiered system, which gives different benefits with different cover limits to different cadres of employees. The level of care you choose will have an impact on the type of hospitals that your employees can visit for treatment, which will in turn determine whether they will consider you a caring employer.
Related: Don’t be Blindsided by the New NHIF Rates
2. Do you want to cover the dependents of your employees?
The second important question you need to address is whether you want to cover the dependents of your employees. First-rate companies usually offer a cover for the dependents of their employees in an effort to keep the employees motivated and as an employee retention strategy. In this regard, you need to consider what this means for your company, and whether your organization can afford it. It is possible to get great rates, usually on a cascading scale for every additional dependent your employees have. In effect, the total cost of providing health benefits for dependents under your corporate scheme will be lower than the cost of providing this service for individuals.
3. What is your Budget?
Your budget is one of the key factors that should guide your decision to buy insurance for your employees. Private health insurance is usually provided as an employment benefit and it is not a legal requirement (NHIF is a legal requirement). However, serious employers demonstrate their commitment to their employees by providing them with health insurance. In this sense, health insurance schemes have become a need-to-have benefit that demonstrates your seriousness as an employer. Make sure that you have set aside and can sustain the level of care you want to provide for your employees. If need be, use a co-payment plan to help set up the scheme and then gradually take up the tab as your budget for this item increases.
Related: NHIF Cover: Insufficient, but Absolutely Necessary
4. Which scheme will give your employees the best cover for your budgets?
The final bit in this process is collating the information you have gathered. One crucial piece of information you need is the actual cost of offering the service. It can be time consuming to get credible figures from all the health insurance firms in Kenya. This process need not be difficult any more. Get these rates by filling our free quote form, and then submit the form to an insurance company of your choice.
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