How Much Does Business Health Insurance Cost Per Employee?
All you need to know about Business Health Insurance costs, including how it’s taxed, what affects the price, and ways to bring your premium down.
Vitality is one of the UK’s leading company health insurance providers. It currently provides cover to more than 1 million customers in the UK.
Its mission is to make people healthier by rewarding positive lifestyle choices. When your employees get healthier, Vitality will reward them through its Vitality Programme. A reward-based incentive system for healthy living.
It offers award winning cover that is rated 5 Star by Defaqto. As well as this, it holds an ‘excellent’ rating on Trustpilot, with a score of 4.0 stars out of 5 from more than 25,000 independent reviews.
Vitality offers different group private medical insurance options for businesses of all sizes. One of its most popular plans is Business Healthcare.
This is aimed at small and medium business with up to 249 employees. Like its other products it’s designed to protect employers and their employees from the financial impact of becoming unwell.
Vitality’s Business Healthcare policy includes the following features:
Vitality’s Business Healthcare plan is aimed towards small and medium businesses by providing primary care to employees when they need it most. The core cover it offers is outlined below.
All Vitality group health insurance includes the following core core.
As standard Vitality’s Business Healthcare provides full cover for in-patient treatment. This is any treatment that requires employees to stay in hospital overnight. Cover includes hospital and consultant fees, diagnostic tests, MRI, CT and PET scans. Major surgeries with long recovery times, such as heart surgery, will fall under inpatient care.
As part of the core cover, your employees will be covered in full for minor procedures that need some recovery time in a hospital bed, but that won’t require them to stay over night. Surgeries for cataracts, varicose veins and hernias are common examples.
Vitality’s policy provides cover for operations or other invasive procedures carried out as an out-patient. These also allow patients to go home the same day, but without admitting them to a hospital. Procedures like growth or skin tag removal, surgical dentistry, and biopsies will come under out-patient surgery.
Any diagnostic tests, consultations, scans or treatment that is not a surgical procedure will be covered under your plans chosen out-patient cover.
This provides your employees with full cover to help them cope with a cancer diagnosis. Treatment covered includes preventive cancer treatment, diagnostic tests, surgery, drug therapies and radiotherapy.
Care to relieve pain and other symptoms is also included as part of Vitality’s End of life cover, as well as home nursing costs of up to £1,000 per day for a maximum of 14 days.
Vitality also offers a Corporate Health Insurance plan for businesses with 100 or more employees. It offers the same core cover as the Business Healthcare policy, but with additional cover for childbirth, menopause and cancer recovery – plus additional rewards.
For more information on this, speak to one of our experts on 0207 442 5880 or email help@drewberry.co.uk.
Nadeem Farid
Head of Health & Wellbeing
The core cover included in Vitality’s business health insurance gives your staff a great deal of essential cover. If you’d still like to provide more protection for your employees, you can enhance the plan by adding on any number of optional extras.
Adding all of them will increase the cost of the policy, but your employees will have a more comprehensive private health insurance policy to cover most eventualities of becoming ill.
Although out-patient surgeries are covered by Vitality at a core level, there are other out-patient procedures that you can include on your policy. Consultations, consultants’ fees, and diagnostic tests (for example, blood tests and x-rays) can also be covered up to a set limit per policy year:
Your employees can also receive £35 of cover for each session of physiotherapy they have in facilities outside of your chosen Vitality hospital list.
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Adding on this option will mean that your employees receive full cover for all out-patient diagnostic tests, such as blood tests and x-rays. The amount of out-patient cover you’ve chosen can then be used for other consultations and out-of-network physiotherapy.
This is a popular option which many employers add. It provides staff with cover for a range of health treatments and therapies. For example chiropractic, osteopathy, chiropody, podiatry, acupuncture and homeopathic treatment are covered in full.
With this add on, staff are also entitled to two consultations per policy year with a dietician following a GP or consultant referral.
Mental health conditions affect a large proportion of people and for some the mental health support that comes with core cover might not be enough. Adding the option for extra mental health cover gives your teams the following:
Another option you’ll need to consider for your group health policy is the hospital networks you’ll have access to.
The Countrywide network includes all facilities in the UK’s largest hospital groups, including BMI Healthcare, Nuffield Health, Spire Healthcare, Ramsay Health Care and Circle Health. It also gives your employees access to some Central London facilities.
This option also enables your employees to have two Face-to-Face GP consultations in the London area.
While this option is the highest in terms of cost, it also gives your employees access to the most comprehensive list of facilities. Staff will be able to use all private hospitals in the UK that meet Vitality’s quality requirements, as well as all NHS Private Patient Units in the UK.
On top of that, the London Care option also includes unlimited Face-to-Face GP consultations in the London area.
The Consultant Select option is the most cost effective option, however it works slightly differently. Rather than having access to a specific list of clinics, Vitality will draw up a shortlist of experts to carry out treatment following a GP referral. They’ll provide a choice of up to 10 of the highest-ranking consultants for the issue, based on their specialist field, performance and location.
This add on helps your employees to cover the costs of treatment and tests relating to their eyesight, oral health and hearing.
By adding this option you would provide your employees with comprehensive cover for trips outside of the UK of up to 120 days each. It includes:
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This additional cover also includes a market leading travel vaccination and preventative medication cover which includes 11 common jabs and anti-malarial treatment.
Available on plans covering at least 2 employees, the Personal Health Fund is similar to a corporate health cash plan. It helps employees pay for everyday healthcare bills which aren’t fully covered by private health care. This includes things such as health screens and chronic prescriptions.
If your employees have worries concerning their work or personal life Vitality’s EAP could help. Through this they can get access to:
Regardless of the other options you build on top of your core cover, all Vitality Business Healthcare plans include some fantastic additional benefits as standard.
With all Business Healthcare plans employees will get unlimited access to Vitality GP. A digital doctors service which allows employees to speak to a GP at a time that suits them. They can get expert advice, private prescriptions and onward referrals all through a handy app.
Through Vitality GP, employees can also get up to 2 face-to-face consultations with a private GP from the Vitality network. It’s important to note that there is a £20 fee per consultation.
All policies give your employees access to a number of mental health support services. This includes to up to 8 Talking Therapies sessions with no medical exclusions.
Not only this they will get access to Togetherall, an award-winning online mental health service which provides support 24 / 7. Employees can also get a 12 month subscription to the popular ‘Headspace’ mindfulness app.
If your employees receive medical care from the NHS that would’ve been eligible under the policy, they’ll receive a cash payment from Vitality. This pays out the following amounts:
Vitality have partnered with Peppy to provide support to those transitioning through menopause. Peppy connects your employees to real-life menopause practitioners through one-to-one messaging, video or phone consultations. These practitioners can provide advice on symptom management and refer employees for treatment when needed.
As Vitality’s core mission is to enhance and protect people’s health, their core business health insurance includes a robust lifestyle programme. It helps staff focus on becoming healthier by providing a range of added benefits:
All employees start at a bronze status and can earn Vitality Points to reach silver, gold, and finally platinum status by completing personalised goals. When your staff level up, they can earn a cheaper policy excess.
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You as an employer can also benefit by receiving cashback for each staff member that engages with the Vitality Programme. On top of that, Vitality’s own research shows that companies with healthier staff are likely to have higher productivity and better workplace wellbeing.
It’s important to know all the benefits on offer with Vitality’s policy. As well as the above they also offer some other benefits which can easily get overlooked when looking at a policy. These include:
When it comes to the cost of a Vitality Business Healthcare plan there are a number of factors that will have an impact. Some will be specific to your business such as:
There are however other factors specific to your policy and the options you choose that will affect the cost of your business health insurance. We’ve outlined these below.
All insurance policies go through a form of underwriting before a policy will begin. The kind of underwriting that takes place for a company health insurance policy will have an impact on the price. You’ll have a choice between the following options:
Opting to have your team members pay an excess in the event of a claim will impact the cost of the policy. As with most kinds of insurance, a higher excess will make the policy cheaper, while a lower excess will increase the price.
Vitality’s excess options are outlined below:
While selecting a higher excess can be a good way to reduce the cost of the company health insurance policy, it will still need to be an affordable amount for staff. They’ll need to pay the excess once per policy year on their first claim.
To give a clearer indication of price, we’ve provided some examples below. These are based on a company based in London and one in Leicester. Each has 6 employees, aged 25, 30, 35, 40, 45 and 50 with the following cover options:
Vitality Business Health Costs | Location | Weekly Cost Per Employee | Total Weekly Cost |
|---|---|---|
Leicester | £5.23 | £31.38 |
London | £10.96 | £65.75 |
As you can see, the company in Leicester would pay just over £5.00 per team member each week. This works out as £135.98 per month, or £1,631.76 for the policy year.
By comparison, the same size business operating in London pays almost £11.00 per week for each member of staff. Over the month, that adds up to £284.93, or £3,419.52 for the policy year.
Remember, you can always tailor your plan by adding or removing certain features that matter more to you and your team. This flexibility means there’s a range of options to suit every budget.
Small business health insurance is age-rated. So the amount you pay is based on the average age of your team. This means your premium will go up slightly each year inline with your employees age as the risk of claims increases.
Nadeem Farid
Head of Health & Wellbeing
With Vitality offering so many customisable features, it can be difficult to know where to start when setting up a company health insurance policy. The features and benefits you’ll offer your staff might differ depending on your industry, as well as your company size and wellbeing goals.
Whether you need small business health insurance or corporate health insurance, our expert employee benefits consultants are on hand to help. We’ll listen to your needs and provide all the important information, making sure you get the best possible price for your desired cover.
To speak to one of the team call 02074425880 or email help@drewberry.co.uk.
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