Aviva UK Health managing director Steve Bridger has told advisers to demand data from insurers on how long it takes patients to return to work after treatment, noting the sector does not compare to group risk rivals.
Bridger was also managing director of group protection at Aviva until April 2020, and told delegates at the Association of Medical Insurers and Intermediaries (AMII) Health and Wellbeing Summit this evidence was available from group risk providers.
He explained for group protection he could deliver data on a wide range of circumstances, such as how many people were supported for mental health interventions or musculoskeletal conditions.
Data could show whether claimants were still working while they were being supported, if they were off sick from work, if they returned back to work, if this was within a deferred period, if they stayed at work, whether they needed ongoing support and if were they still working and in what condition.
But Bridger lamented this was not possible currently in the private medical insurance (PMI) sector.
“After all that support and treatment of managing someone through a journey. I couldn’t tell you how quick they got back to work – I can’t even tell you the clinical outcome,” he said.
“That feels like – and customers tell us – that’s a real miss on our part and that’s something we need to look at in the future,” he added.
Adviser and customer pressure
Consequently, Bridger urged advisers to ask for the data on how long it takes for patients to return to work.
“Typically it’s the same person talking to the same buyer or HR representative around their PMI and their income protection,” he said.
“And one of those you would expect to know the return to work rate, intervention, the number of days for a notification whether they got back to work, that sort of good stuff and you give it in a quarterly claims update for the larger clients.
“I think the customers do want it. And they will be starting to demand that soon. We’re starting to see pockets of it. You should demand it off us as advisers because it’s an outcome.”
Bridger added this would help clients to justify and evidence spending large sums of money on wellbeing strategies by measuring outcomes of treatment.
“Outcomes are important. If you were investing x million a year to change delivery in IT process, what do you want to know? Your payback a year in outcome. Why can’t you have a very similar thing here?” he said.
“You don’t need to make it an industry itself. It can just be simple markers but return to work, return to work rates, staying off work feel like obvious things.”