Five must-know healthcare buzzwords for Singapore

Singapore is internationally recognised for having one of the most accessible, modern, and successful healthcare systems. With some of the finest doctors and nurses in the world, and top-class facilities and equipment, Singapore has now become a hub for medical tourism.

There are now over 2,400 private medical clinics on hand to assist those in Singapore with their medical needs, yet the majority of patients and businesses do not fully understand the services they are entitled to.

Below are the five 'must-know' healthcare buzzwords to aid in the basic understanding and overview of private healthcare in Singapore.

1. Healthcare Inflation
Medical technology and pharmaceuticals are always improving. With private clinics pushing to out-do each other with equipment and skilled people, increases in annual costs are a fact of life in the private healthcare sector.

For patients and businesses with private healthcare plans, these inflationary pressures need to be factored into future coverage and budgets.

The Singapore Government announced an impressive 6.4% budget increase in public healthcare spending, mainly due to Singapore's changing demographics and an expected increase in diabetes and heart disease cases.

The private sector, similarly, will be planning for the opportunities and challenges of supplying medial services to local private patients, and an increasing number of medical tourists. As Singapore’s medical tourism reputation grows, so will the demand and, potentially, the price of care.

2. Enhanced Portable Insurance
A small number of companies provide Portable Medical Insurance, which allows an employee the right to retain certain benefits when switching employers. This coverage is typically applied through a Portable Medical Benefit Scheme, a Transferable Medical Insurance scheme, or a Shield Plan.

A key feature of Portable Insurance is that employees will not be excluded from coverage due to pre-existing conditions.

3. Medical Auditing
For corporate organisations offering medical benefit packages, and Human Resources teams who have to manage employee benefits, ensuring quality and fairness is vital. Businesses need to trust that medical clinics are not overcharging for treatments and prescriptions, and that certain clinics are not seen as ‘easy touches’ for medical certificates.

In Singapore, with a large number of clinic franchises, quality consistency and transparency of individual clinics is vitally important for companies offering health benefits.

Medical auditing and investigation is a way to ensure medical clinics and their parent companies meet measurable standards in terms of affordability and care. Insurance companies and brokers play an important role in monitoring and following up on these audits for businesses.

Ideally this helps manage costs and improves the overall patient (and employee) care.

Additionally, an audit also provides a framework for improvements. Independent auditing is a vital part of keeping the health insurance market competitive.

4. Flexible Benefits
Flexible Benefits allows employees of all positions and ages within the business to tailor their private healthcare plans to their individual needs. Over the last five years, flexible private (employer-provided) healthcare plans have become more common.

Regional surveys suggest that employees want non-traditional healthcare benefits, such as critical illness coverage and life insurance, but tend to have a lack of understanding when it comes to the healthcare packages provided by their employer.

Offering employees the choice of a flexible healthcare scheme is beneficial for both employers and employees, leading to higher employee satisfaction, and ultimately lower staff turnover.

5. Total Medical Journey
Overseas, an increasing number of top employers are focusing on their employees' total medical journey. This is a holistic view of company healthcare plans and the needs of individuals at different points in their career.

It includes proactive initiatives such as in-office support (healthy meals provided at work), gym memberships, corporate team building through sport, and different types of healthcare coverage.

The health of a company's employees is one of the few competitive recruitment advantages a business can have outside of remuneration. If a business invests in the long-term health of their employees, including through the promotion of healthy lifestyles, this could lead to a motivated and more loyal workforce.

iKnow what you did last night
Increasingly, individuals can monitor, measure, and guide their personal health and fitness like never before.

Devices such as Adidas miCoach Smart Run, Samsung Gear Fit, the Pebble smartwatch, Kreyos Meteor, Nike+ (iPod), Motorola’s MotoActv, the Chinese made GEAK Watch, Garmin's Vivosmart fitness tracker and, let's not forget the smartwatch game changer, the Apple Watch now allow you to monitor exercise, nutrition, and sleep.

And why should businesses care? Because, theoretically, employees' health and exercise habits can be tracked 24/7. There are of course privacy issues, but for companies and insurers there will shortly come the time where they will be able to reward individuals who keep themselves in shape with lower premiums.

Healthcare is always a hot topic. In Singapore, the relationship between employers, employees, private healthcare clinics, and healthcare insurers will have an increasingly important (and possibly complex) role to play.

From both and employer's and employee's perspective, there needs to be a greater understanding of what healthcare benefits can be accessed, and what this means for the happiness of the local workforce.