Following a recent policy roundtable debate in Westminster, Pam Whelan discusses the future of Dental Plans and getting oral healthcare awareness higher up company agendas.
Relaying these messages, however, still requires something of a mind-shift, both among the public and corporate sphere. For example, dental insurance continue to be viewed as a benefit set apart from overall healthcare benefits. However, dental is one of the few preventive healthcare benefits open to employees, as benefits such as PMI are used to treat illness - not to help prevent illness from occurring.
Prevention
The roundtable explored also how dentistry can play a greater role in prevention and early intervention of long term conditions. This, in turn, can reduce budget spends and contribute positively towards the patient’s health experience, reducing the need to visit the GP and thus sharing the responsibility across the primary care sector.
This is ever more important against the backdrop of strained public finances, new NHS systems in England and new structures focused on public health.
Making this a success will, however, require significant input from organisations across the UK as well as continued cross-working with dental care providers. Providing schemes such as Denplan encourages regular dental attendance thereby increasing the awareness of the benefits of good oral health and the wider impact on general wellbeing.
Implementing change
When looking to undertake long term change in the public arena. Communication is a key factor in enhancing the status of dental healthcare and more needs to be done to communicate to employees the value dentistry provides as a wider healthcare benefit.
By moving away from the perception that dentistry is solely focussed on the mouth and educating employees through effective communications about the wider benefit of being dentally fit, a dental plan becomes far more relevant to a company’s overall health and wellbeing strategy.
According to YouGov as part of the 2013 Denplan Dental Benefits Survey, 63% of employees without a dental plan would consider one if their employer offered it and 30% of people would be attracted to a new employer by a dental plan.
Employees prioritise cost and value for money as the key deciding factors when considering benefits, but there is a strong second tier of factors including the potential to cover emergencies (79%) and how often they use the benefit (80%), both factors that continue to increase year on year.
Dental is one of the most useable employee benefits – whether fully or part funded – and provides regular dental care at an affordable level with costs for a dental plan with Denplan starting from as little as £4 per employee, per month.
That’s why some dental plan providers also offer bespoke employee communications in order to maximise engagement and produce higher benefit take-up rates, which benefits both the employee and the organisation.
It seems that employees are not alone in the demand for dental benefits either, with 42% of companies reviewing their benefits considering adding dental. Furthermore, not only do 69% of employers recognise that dental plans enhance employee wellbeing, but 49% believe that a dental plan helps to manage staff absences and time taken off for sickness.
Employee health and wellbeing has increased dramatically in importance for companies and many employers have recognised the impact a healthy workforce has on motivation and performance.
The proportion of companies offering a dental plan to their employees has risen significantly compared to last year reaching nearly half (49%) in large companies. However, companies must manage these benefits within their budgets while still making them attractive and fitting within the company health and wellbeing strategy
PMI remains the most popular benefit taken up by staff, when it is company paid. However, only 24% of employees select this as an option when they asked to contribute to the cost in a part-paid scheme. Interestingly, dental plans are taken up by nearly a third of employees if it’s offered to them and two out of three dental plans are partly paid by the employee.
It seems that there is not only significant demand for dental as a benefit among employees and employers alike, but there is also a significant need for increasing dental care access in the wider public health agenda. Why is it then that dental benefits continue to be treated as a separate entity to healthcare benefits?
When the evidence so strongly shows dental healthcare can be a key indicator in the detection and early diagnosis of many more serious illnesses – surely it is time to recognise that dental benefits should be used as a key preventive healthcare benefit, rather than a bolt-on for PMI.
Pam Whelan is head of corporate at Denplan
