As the name suggests, preventative healthcare means focusing on prevention over cure. While “standard” healthcare involves treating illnesses and injuries after they emerge, preventative healthcare means introducing measures to make it less likely that people will suffer from these illnesses and injuries in the first place.

In this post we’ll look at how you can apply preventative healthcare principles to the workplace and explore the business benefits of doing so.

How Does Preventative Healthcare Work?

A 2004 study found that, in the US:

• Around 50% of all deaths in 2000 could be attributed to “preventable behaviours and exposures”.
• The leading causes of these deaths were cardiovascular disease, chronic respiratory disease, certain infectious diseases, diabetes, and unintentional injuries.
• 40,000 people die in the US each year due to a poor diet coupled with a sedentary lifestyle.

More recently, the World Health organisation found that over 66% of all deaths worldwide can be attributed to non-communicable diseases.

Preventative healthcare, also known as prophylaxis, means implementing measures to reduce illness, injury, and death through these “preventable behaviours and exposures.”

In practice, this could involve:

• Putting health warnings on cigarette packets to discourage people from smoking.
• Encouraging people of all ages to visit their doctor for regular check-ups, even when they feel healthy.
• Implementing mandatory safety measures, such as wearing seatbelts in cars.
• Taking steps to reduce air pollution to help reduce respiratory diseases.

Preventative Healthcare in the Workplace

In a way, workplaces across the world already practice preventative healthcare, even if they don’t realise they’re doing so. If your workplace has a health and safety policy, for example, then you’re already taking steps to make it less likely that your employees will injure themselves at work.

Yet preventative healthcare in the workplace can go much deeper than this. Champion a healthy lifestyle in the workplace and provide the tools and resources employees need to prioritise their health and wellbeing. This could lead to overall healthier and happier employees, along with fewer days lost to unplanned absences.

Indeed, there are real business benefits to implementing preventative healthcare measures in the workplace. Be sure to read our full guide to the links between employee health and productivity.

How To Introduce Preventative Healthcare Measures to Your Workplace

Preventative healthcare in the workplace can start with a policy that says that no employee should ever come to the workplace if they’re feeling unwell. If their illness is catching, then showing up for work can have a snowball effect on productivity and absences.

Yet as we said above, preventative healthcare is all about making it less likely that anyone will get ill, or injured, in the first place. With this in mind, you can take steps to implement a comprehensive employee wellbeing scheme.

This can be as simple as:

• providing staff with free fruit and water while filling your vending machines with healthier snacks
• employee benefits that champion an active lifestyle, such as cycle to work schemes and subsidised gym memberships
• providing health insurance and dental insurance as an employee benefit, even smaller businesses can look at plans which help to fast track appointments with diagnostic cover rather that providing full private healthcare cover.

The Secret of Preventative Health in the Workplace: Offer Business Health Insurance as a Company Benefit

We offer bespoke, tailored business health insurance plans for businesses of all sizes. A business health insurance plan can give your employees immediate full access to private healthcare services, but can also be used to help offer private diagnostic services to fast-track long waits to be seen and treat issues before they get worse.

Because of this, you’ll likely find that you’ll lose fewer days to unplanned absences, coupled with a rise in both productivity and staff retention.

Some smaller businesses may think that they cannot afford to provide their employees with health insurance plans. This simply is not true. Businesses of any size can give their employees some level of cover. At Capacity Insights we offer dedicated schemes for businesses with 10 or more employees. Read our full guide to the different health insurance options for smaller businesses.

Whether you’re looking to invest in your first business health insurance plan, or you want to change or add to your current package, we’re here for you. Get in touch to find out more.