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One low-cost way public sector employers can enhance their employees’ benefit package is by offering worksite benefits. These voluntary benefits can help protect employees in the event of an unexpected illness or accident by helping them offset their out-of-pocket medical expenses.
Offering worksite benefits has little impact on your budget, helps you differentiate from other employers, reduces employee turnover, and increases employee satisfaction. There is little to no administration on your part. Premiums are taken from paycheck deductions. And any cash payout is administrated between the third-party vendor and the employee directly.
Worksite options offered through the employer usually have lower premiums for employees than if they purchased an individual policy. Also, they find it convenient that a variety of insurance options are available to them all in one place, as it provides value to them.
Some common worksite benefits include hospital indemnity coverage, critical illness insurance, and accident insurance.
If you or a family member has been admitted to the hospital before, you know that it can be expensive. A hospital indemnity insurance plan can be added to an existing health insurance plan to help cover the costs of a hospital stay. This type of plan pays you a predetermined benefit amount per day for each hospital admission, typically up to a year. Plans may cover inpatient hospital, intensive care unit (ICU), and critical care unit (CCU) admissions and stays. Some plans also cover outpatient surgery, ambulance transportation, and continuous care expenses.
Critical illness insurance provides coverage for acute illness that have the potential to become financially catastrophic like cancer, heart attack, organ transplant, etc. It is designed to cover out-of-pocket expenses not covered by regular health insurance, such as deductible and copays as well as many out-of-network charges.
Critical illness benefits can offset some of the lost wages due to illness and extended time away from work, as well as help employees pay routine living expenses such as childcare, transportation, and rent or mortgage payments.
Accident insurance can help protect your employees financially in case of an accidental injury. Regular medical insurance won’t cover all the expenses that result from injury—at the very least, injured employees would likely owe a deductible and copays—and accident insurance can help fill in those coverage gaps as employees pay out-of-pocket medical bills. They can use accident coverage to pay for anything they need following a qualifying accident. Accident insurance will deliver a payment to the plan holder for various qualifying incidents.
Worksite benefits can help supplement an employee’s health plan by providing them with an additional financial safety net if a medical situation arises that they have trouble affording. For more information about worksite benefits, please contact your NIS Consultant.