Fitness, Healthcare and Private Medical insurance: people investment

Source: Healthcare Exec

Date :07/12/2007 09:39:18

People are a firm’s greatest asset. ExecUK looks at why a company gym, screening programme and good PMI aid recruitment and retention as part of an employee recruitment programme.

Nine years ago I accepted a health screening as part of the research for an article on one of the UK’s leading private hospital and healthcare companies. Having been fit as a flea all my life I took it up simply as an opportunity to see inside one of these hospitals. Thorough physical and chemical tests showed no problems, but I was asked to get my GP to follow up one query.

By John O’Hanlon

Though within the normal range the PSA (prostate specific antigen) level was borderline. The follow up confirmed that. Normally my GP would have left it at that but because I came in on referral from the Nuffield he thought he’d better pass me on to the hospital urologist. In short it turned out that I did have prostate cancer, early stage but an aggressive type. “If you leave it alone, John, it will do you harm.”

Available treatments are radical prostatectomy (cutting it out) radiotherapy (burning it out) or brachytherapy, a newish procedure that involves implanting radioactive seeds to kill the cancer. Only one place in the UK did brachytherapy at that time and I was fortunate enough to get into the hands of Dan Ash at Roundhay hospital in Leeds. He did the job, I was off work for a week, and ever since then an annual check-up has shown me clear. Well done, Dan.

Screening works

I tell this tale because I believe everybody should be this lucky. Prostate and other cancers affects a high percentage of men at some stage in their lives; women have to contend with cervical, breast or ovarian cancer; both suffer from RSI, muscular-skeletal problems, heart problems, smoking related illnesses and so on. These things shorten their lives, keep them off work and cost the NHS a lot of money.

But if they are caught early, they can be cured, managed or alleviated. From the company’s point of view this might mean that you get years of work out of an employee who might have died or had to retire. Any procedure is likely to be less invasive and mean less time off work. Down the line the condition can be monitored.

Put crudely, if each employee was a robot preventive maintenance would be in place to make sure you get maximum up-time and a maximum working life out of that machine. Any manufacturing manager and any accountant can tell you that costs less than replacement or taking the machine out of service for repair. Treat employees like machines, then – it makes sense.

Private Medical Insurance

But that’s not the main reason why businesses need to think about managing their employees’ fitness for work. It won’t help to recruit or hold onto staff if you treat them like a machine…

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