When 36?year-old Karen D, a co-operative bank employee, went for her annual medical health check up, she was just following the new corporate regime. She had been complaining of dry cough for a while but it wasn?t too severe to warrant a visit to the doctor, she felt. When the medical report came, Karen was in for a shock. She had been detected with leukemia. ?I am glad that the check up revealed the disease,? says Karen, who has already completed one cycle of treatment.
The concept of corporate health check ups (CHC) has been around for a decade, mainly in MNCs, having picked up only after the IT boom in India. Initially, it was restricted to certain industries with health hazards such as paints or pesticides manufacturing companies. Today, several companies across sectors are investing in it. For instance, Lupin Ltd has set aside 7-8% of its overall HR budget for CHC. Neuland Laboratories has reserved 0.45% of its turnover (Rs 315 crore last year) towards health ? health check up, health insurance, claims, gratuity insurance etc. ?This share goes up every year,? said Ashok Reddy, GM, HR. ICICI Prudential Life Insurance invests Rs 1,500 in CHC for every employee while ICICI Lombard General Insurance sets aside 3% of employee cost on CHCs and preventive healthcare. DBS Business Centres has a Rs 10-Rs 15 lakh budget. Some companies also provide onsite facilities like a doctor visiting twice a week or in-house medical rooms where nurses are available to deal with minor issues. Pre-employment screening/checks are also done to ascertain the health of the applicant and if he can perform his required duties, says B Sudhakar, Chief Human Resources Officer, Tata Chemicals.
The health cover
Earlier the private sector offered health insurance benefits to employees. Now there is an increase in corporate sponsored health testing and the growth is similar to routine diagnostic market, at 15-30%, says Dr BR Das, Executive Director, Research & Technology, Super Religare Laboratories. Artemis, which opened in Noida two years ago got just four to five corporate clients a day. Now it gets 25-30 daily. Companies have realised that prevention is cheaper and better than cure as it reduces absenteeism and creates a healthy workforce. Adds OP Manchanda, CEO, Dr Lal Pathlabs, ?Our corporate portfolio has gone up by 8-9% and I see this sector growing in the coming years.? It helps that the investigation reports are confidential, says Sumathi N, working for a pharma company. ?I am assured that any incidence of illness does not affect my employment.? However, the common complaints usually stem from wrong eating habits and sedentary lifestyle, giving rise to obesity and BP, and recurring aches.
Interestingly, annual CHC happen to be the first brush with preventive health check for many employees. ?It helps in early detection of diseases like hypertension, diabetes, cardiac ailments, cancers,? says Dr Nilesh Shah, Director, Metropolis Health Services. ICICI Prudential Life Insurance and Tata Chemicals has made CHC compulsory for employees over 40 years of age. Ailments like diabetes, cancer and cardiac problems are common in this age group. Rising levels of stress has also led to increasing incidence of early menopause, anaemia and osteoporosis in women. Hypertension and hypercholesterolemia too set in around this age, though a few cases have been detected in the 35 plus age group as well. Adds Dr Shah, commonly hypertension, diabetes and deranged lipid profiles have begun to be diagnosed in younger age groups (28-35 years) in IT, BPO, BFSI industries, which was not the case a decade ago. ?Employees below 40 years are offered an optional annual health check up and a compulsory check up once in two years. We have to push employees to get their health check ups done,? says Sudhakar.
The rationale
CHCs offer a major cost incentive. ?Early diagnosis of a disease implies less treatment cost. This is particularly true for cancer, where early treatment also increases survival rates dramatically,? says Dr Swati Piramal, Director, Piramal Healthcare. Similarly, diabetes which is projected to hit about 20 million Indians by 2020, if not detected and controlled early, can have disastrous consequences including blindness, kidney failure, arthritis, and slow wound healing. Hypertension too leads to cardiovascular diseases. It is estimated that India stands to lose $232 bn in the coming decade due to morbidity and mortality owing to the three killer chronic diseases: Cancer, cardiac problems and diabetes.
The health care industry is growing at 15% annually but preventive health care, despite the recession, is growing much faster. ?The only way we can promote it is through the government, which can give an incentive of say an amount of Rs 20,000 which is non taxable for preventive health checkups for a family of four. Then most people would start health check ups earlier and the cost of management of illness would become cheaper,? said Dr Rana Mehta, Vice President, Healthcare, Technopak Advisors.
Health check ups do not come cheap. On an average the basic annual health check up in a private hospital starts at Rs 8,000. With corporates offering it gratis to their employees, it becomes an incentive to go in for advanced health check up costing upto Rs 20,000, depending on the package. Typically corporate health check rates are discounted by 25%-45% on an average over walk-in MRPs. This would depend on the employee volume, age profile, volume of employee workforce and HR budgets of the particular corporate organisation, adds Dr Shah.
?Is everything fine with me?? a question oft-asked by people to doctors when an illness sets in is now increasingly being asked before any symptom shows up. Thanks to increasing health awareness on the part of the individual coupled with the moolah that a corporate is willing to invest in the cause.