2008-04-28Staff Report 2 By John Ekongo WINDHOEK Prevention is still better than cure. This is the stance that Namibia Health Plan took when they recently introduced the Wellness Programme to potential clients and existing customers in the capital on Tuesday. The NHP wellness programme is aimed at encouraging a healthier lifestyle, creating health awareness programmes and a health education initiative. It contains components such as Med-benefit Entro, a lifestyle screening questionnaire to gain more health related information on members, and also Med-benefit Active, a comprehensive health and fitness assessment that is performed by accredited service providers such as biokineticists and pharmacists. Also in the offing is a stress management programme service provided through screened reports that will be available for members. In this segment, members will be assessed by a registered psychiatric nurse who refers them to relevant service providers as well as a dietician, to mention but a few advantages. In the long run, the wellness programme will ensure that clients or any medically covered person takes charge of their own health attitude and lifestyle. In so doing, this will ease the burden of reoccurring claims and payments of treatment for cases, which can easily be prevented by adapting a well-balanced lifestyle. Customers signing up for the programme will enjoy benefits offered by NHP, which include rebates for gym membership attendance. Also in the offering is regular advice from various service providers such as bio-kinetics, dieticians and other heath service providers. For an extra measure, NHP has included other service providers who are not necessarily in the health industry, such as retail banks, roadside assistance, cellular phone specialist Internet service providers and baby and toy shops, among others. These benefits will be at no extra cost to the member. NHP used the opportunity to inform potential clients that they will load information on their website for consumers to access and have their profile captured. Members of NHP medical aid scheme can access the website using their membership number. It is believed that once this information is captured it will go a long way in profiling each member on an individual basis and in turn, this will lead NHP to offer a tailor-made wellness programme. The programme is non-restrictive and can be tailored to suit employee group schemes as well. 2008-04-28Staff Report 2
