Panasonic has replaced its traditional private medical insurance (PMI) scheme with benefits offered through a healthcare trust.
The trust, which will provide health insurance for the electronic firm's 1,300 employees based across three different sites in the UK, operates in an almost identical manner to traditional PMI schemes. However, healthcare trusts can provide employers with greater control over costs and result in savings for an employer, which keeps the surplus cash if claims are lower than anticipated, rather than an insurer taking extra profit. Such arrangements also allow the employer to set the rules and decide when they want the fund to pay out.
Panasonic is using a healthcare trust provided by Healix.
Richard Mills, head of UK HR at Panasonic, said: “The change will deliver cost savings to Panasonic against our traditional corporate PMI scheme. However the key benefit since moving to Healix has been the huge improvement in the quality of support across all aspects of the PMI process. Our employees have commented on how impressed they have been, being able to speak to medical professionals on the helpline from the start of the process.”