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COVID-19 Pushes Health Care Coverage Up HR Priorities’ List  

While employers increasingly tout new benefits such as student loan repayments and subsidized childcare, the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic has renewed interest in comprehensive health care coverage. So reports Human Resource Executive.

COVID corona 4893276 640 small“There are many dark aspects of COVID. But one of the things that is actually a real positive is it has refocused the importance of healthcare and attending to it in very basic ways, but also in very deliberate ways,” says Cecilia McKenney, Quest Diagnostics senior vice president and chief human resources officer. “It’s enabled us to reimagine what should we be offering as healthcare. The most foundational care is the healthcare program that you offer your employees.”

A Quest survey of 423 HR professionals and 846 employees at employers with 100 or more workers found that 50% of employees would consider moving to a new job to make more money, followed by 38% for better benefits in general and 36% for better healthcare benefits, with that same percentage (36%) citing better work-life balance.

Quest also reported that 63% of employees said they delayed routine medical appointments and/or screenings over the past two years, while 77% said preventive healthcare was hard to perform during the pandemic.

“[Medical coverage] has been the sleeping benefit, and it’s awakened in COVID,” McKenney said. “And this is a huge new opportunity.”

Read the full article from Human Resource Executive.

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