Sun Life is launching Equinoxe LifeCare’s virtual medical evaluation services to help plan sponsors with disability management. The service allows plan members and their dependants to connect with virtual health-care services and licensed health-care practitioners. It also enables them to consult with medical professionals through secure video or chat via smartphone, tablet or computer. In addition, the service allows plan members to requisition […]
Mercer is appoints Dr. Andrew Halpert as clinical innovation leader for health in the U.S. and Canada. In the role, Halpert will be responsible for leading Mercer’s clinical consulting offerings and health strategy development. With 30 years of experience in the industry, he was previously the senior director for clinical and network solutions at Collective Health and […]
When an employee with diabetes is working in a safety-sensitive role experiences severely low blood sugar, what are the ramifications for employers? This question was addressed at Benefits Canada’s 2019 Chronic Disease at Work conference in Toronto in June. “For you, as an employer, what if this was your employee on their way to meet […]
Looking at South Korea today, it’s hard to believe the country was one of the world’s poorest just a few decades ago. But since the 1960s, its economy has been growing quickly. “In fact, from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s, it had one of the highest growth rates in the world, and at times in […]
Digital benefits platform League Inc. is partnering with the Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence to improve the application of artificial intelligence and machine learning in health care. Through the partnership, League will work with the Vector Institute on using AI, machine learning and other predictive techniques to create personalized health recommendations and plans tailored for […]
As plan sponsors continue to look for ways to control drug plan spending, a new study from the University of British Columbia shows that switching from an open to a closed formulary can save big dollars. The study, published this month in the Canadian Medical Association Journal Open, analyzed what happened when the B.C. Hospital […]
Plan sponsors can expect to see a three to five per cent increase in prescription drug claims in 2019, according to Buck’s annual Canadian health-care trend survey. However, the survey noted, since insurance providers also add a market inflation factor, the projected increase is actually 10.99 per cent, down from 12.45 per cent in 2018. Based […]
The American Association of Retired Persons Foundation and the law firm Garrison, Levin-Epstein, Fitzgerald and Pirrotti have filed a class-action lawsuit on behalf of Yale University employees who are objecting to their employer instituting fines for those who don’t participate in its wellness program. The university’s program requires its 5,000 unionized staff and their spouses to submit to medical […]
Plan sponsors are increasingly adopting plan design tools to manage their drug plan costs, according to Telus Health’s annual drug trends report. It found private plan drug costs have grown 0.3 per cent per year on average for the past 10 years, made up of an average 2.1 per cent annual decrease in the cost […]
Spectrum Therapeutics, the medical division of Canopy Growth Corp., is partnering with the Canadian Mental Health Association to develop an educational content module related to cannabis in the workplace. The module, which will be part of the CMHA’s workplace mental-health program Not Myself Today, will launch early next year. It will feature a number of physical […]