Call the doctor, staff

If your child falls ill when you are on holiday and you are able to call a round-the-clock doctor service to attend on the child, then you are unlikely to forget the experience.

And if the service is provided by your employer as part of medical coverage, then it’s highly likely that you will seek a similar perk when you change jobs, observes Kunal Sinha, on how medical support is becoming an integral part of HR policy in progressive companies.

Sinha runs a preventive service called Healthcare Magic, which has 7,000 doctors on call, round the clock. Besides allopathic, the service has counsellors and specialists in alternative medical streams such as homeopathy and ayurveda.

The company also has tie-ups with three insurance companies — Bajaj Allianz, ICICI Lombard and Reliance General Insurance. Its online service comes bundled with insurance, but under specified conditions. Sometimes it is linked to insurance renewal, or offered to those with Rs 5 lakh coverage, he says.

Reducing ills, and bills

The service has over 80 corporate clients and individual customers. Employees can call a counsellor if they are stressed during the day. Or they could reduce the time spent in researching an illness if someone in the family is ill, says Sinha.

According to insights the five-year-old company has gathered so far, the online service has helped reduce workplace absenteeism by three to six days annually.

Besides, as people talk over their problem and receive timely advice, the problem is nipped early on, thereby reducing the health bill. This, in turn, lowers the annual health premiums paid to insurance companies, he says.

If a 20-something employee is detected with high cholesterol — an oft-seen condition — timely treatment helps avert future complications and heightened medical premiums.

Terming the services of companies such as Healthcare Magic as fundamental, Ratan Jalan, Founder and Principal Consultant at Medium Healthcare Consulting, draws parallels with the convenience of online ticket booking, or even pizza home-delivery. People are willing to pay extra — so it’s a question of marketing the concept to generate greater awareness, he says.

A responsible corporate looks at medical benefits as more than a financial item affecting profit and loss statements, he says. It’s about the company taking on a greater role in employee healthcare. When much is made of plant and machinery maintenance, people too should not be ignored on the assumption that they can take care of themselves, he says.

At the same time, however, there are instances where young people do not use the health coupons given to them, even when it’s free, says Sinha. For instance, a weight-loss workshop attracted only people who were about to marry in the near future, he recounts.

Explaining the service, he says that of the 38 gastroenterologists on call, an employee query is answered by the first doctor who sees it.

The doctors are paid according to the number of questions they answer in an hour. To ensure quality responses, an internal panel screens the doctors before taking them on board and handholds them in the initial stages.

There are about 800 calls a day, and a specialist query costs Rs 599 for a local consumer and $35 for overseas.

Click for advice

Emergency calls are not entertained and the individual is directed to meet a doctor, says Sinha. Common queries include hair-loss worries, allergies, back-pain, fever, cough and cold. Specialist queries are stomach- and skin-related, gynaecological issues and orthopaedic concerns among others.

The company’s corporate clients are currently mainly in the information technology, banking and finance, and automobile sectors. While the service is provided to all employees in some firms, in others it is limited to those facing high stress levels and with Internet access. Accordingly, the payment ranges from Rs 400 to Rs 1,000 per employee.

Although online healthcare service currently has several players, including Hyderabad’s ehealthaccess.com, Bangalore’s 1to1help.net and Mumbai’s e-mediangels.com, Healthcare Magic remains one of the early birds, having started in 2008.

And as it was floated by engineers, rather than doctors, Sinha says they know how to draw more traffic to their site. In fact, the site pops up among the top search options for healthcare solutions. The focus now is on efficiencies, such as reducing the time taken to answer a query, he says.

Loyalty points

Sinha expects the next wave of business to come from the smaller towns — say, a Jehanabad in Bihar, Jabalpur in Madhya Pradesh or Azampur in Uttar Pradesh — which have negligible access to medical specialists, even as Internet connectivity improves.

The company is also pushing ahead with its mobile applications, branding it as a “doctor in your pocket”, offering easy connectivity and constant updates. Available on Android handsets and iPhone, the application already has 44,000 downloads.

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