Healthy on his own
Anna Geroeva, Kommersant
(published on the Rockefeller website)
The owner is a gentleman
Each employer has the right to decide independently how he should take care of the health of the staff. The exception is organizations whose employees, according to the order of the Ministry of Health and Social Development, are required to be regularly examined by specialized doctors. These are, for example, civil aviation pilots or food industry workers.
Theoretically, every citizen of Russia has the right to free medical examination in public health institutions. To pass the examination, it is enough to present a compulsory medical insurance policy to the registry of the polyclinic at the place of registration. Then, having received a medical card at the polyclinic's registry, go with it to specialized specialists.
Experts say that after a free examination, the patient will receive an objective picture of his physical condition. However, according to the head of the Research Institute of Pulmonology of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences Alexander Chuchalin, the national project "Health", during which the state promised to modernize clinical laboratories, has only just begun. And high-quality equipment is not available in all regions of the country. So, it is not worth hoping that doctors will qualitatively examine all their patients. Therefore, various voluntary health insurance programs have become so widespread.
As the experience of insurers shows, the standard social package, which today is most often offered to an employee by Russian employers, includes outpatient care, home call for emergency and emergency medical care, as well as dental services and hospitalization in departmental or municipal hospitals.
"Basically, employers buy from us a standard package of services for employees," says Yulia Bykovskaya, a leading specialist in the sales department of Alfa–Insurance, "Less often we help in conducting professional examinations of employees employed at food enterprises, for example. Because preventive medical care is not an insured event. And accordingly, it is not included in the voluntary insurance system. Citizens whose employers have not granted the right to undergo medical examinations for free, we advise them to undergo medical examinations themselves once a year."
Voluntarily-forciblyCases of voluntary and compulsory medical examination among domestic companies are still an exception, confirming the rule.
For example, the management of the Mediaterra communication agency this year obliged employees and their family members (more than 30 people in total) to get outpatient cards and be examined in the Family Doctor clinic network.
"According to the agreement, our employees will be able to visit doctors to detect diseases at the early stages of their development," says Lia Yavolinskaya, General director of the Mediaterra agency.– The services of commercial medicine cost the company quite inexpensive: 4,300 rubles per person."
Somewhat differently, but they force the staff of the Baltika brewing company to monitor their health. Brewers receive a voluntary health insurance policy. Branches of Baltika are equipped with medical offices where you can get vaccinations, injections prescribed by doctors, get first aid, undergo a routine examination. For example, one of the last scheduled examinations at the Baltic was carried out by ophthalmologists.
In addition, the company provides additional payments on sick leave, so that it would be "unprofitable" for employees to come to work with a cold.
"Baltika rents halls for team sports. Employees in St. Petersburg can visit a sports center equipped with swimming pools on the company's territory. If there is no regional branch of the sports center, the staff is provided with partial compensation for visiting external pools," says Yulia Shevlyakova, Baltika Public Relations specialist.
As practice shows, multinational companies have found an excellent way to stimulate a healthy spirit among staff. The inspirers and organizers of preventive measures, as a rule, are the departments of internal communications and personnel, and to miss a visit to the doctor by the whole department is considered a betrayal of corporate values. It's better not to risk it.
In addition, in a number of companies where the practice of compiling personal ratings of labor personnel is already widespread, skipping the annual medical examination leads to the deduction of personal points. And, accordingly, to a reduction in wages or bonuses. You'll be healthy here...
Elena Morozova, Corporate Communications Manager at PricewaterhouseCoopers Russia, tells:
– Twice a week we bring a fruit basket to each department of the company. Right in the office, we conduct yoga classes with an instructor twice a week. Football, basketball, volleyball and squash sections are organized for the staff. Everyone can visit a psychologist five times a year for free. But we know that our people could take care of their own health. We reminded them of this in a very original way, as it seems to us, by announcing the so-called health month. In May last year, doctors were invited to the office, who did an ECG for everyone, checked blood sugar levels and visual acuity. And the invited ergonomist, at our request, assessed whether the workplaces in the office are properly equipped and whether people do not spoil the spine during sedentary work. We enlightened the staff: invited specialists gave lectures and gave advice on healthy eating, ways to overcome stress, hypertension and ways to combat high cholesterol. Books on how to quit smoking were actively distributed, as well as a very interesting manual developed specifically for our company, or rather, for partners, on how to eat right, cope with stress with a curious name: "Survival Manual". A very, I must say, useful book – people began to monitor their health more closely.
"It is beneficial for the employer of Western companies to have healthy, efficient employees. From an economic point of view, it is more profitable for a company to send a person for a medical examination once a year than to pay for the sick leave of a frequently ill employee on a regular basis (plus, if this is one of the key managers, to suffer lost profits from possible unfinished transactions), – says Rinat Khasyanov, head of development and public relations at the American Medical Center.– Therefore, the heads of Russian enterprises, who are aware of this, recommend their employees to undergo medical examinations, pay for medical insurance or direct attachment to medical institutions. If we talk about foreign companies, then almost all foreigners who come to Russia to work for quite a long time have insurance (as a rule, large international companies). Depending on the conditions of a specific insurance, it may include a planned annual medical check-up, the so-called annual check-up."
You can't buy health, but discounts are possible
The quality of prevention and health protection of middle and senior managers is noticeably higher than that of ordinary staff. Which is generally understandable – a heart attack by the chief accountant will cause much more damage to the company than the broken legs of five couriers, no matter how cynical it may sound.
Large companies and natural monopolies prefer to send management to medical examinations in foreign clinics. The most popular destinations for Russian medical tourism are the United Kingdom and Germany. According to Lev Glaubermann, head of the medical firm Preventicum-International Group, 150-200 people undergo medical examinations every year. "Patients from Russia are most often examined according to the Check-up program," says Lev Glaubermann. "All procedures take four and a half hours. The age of our typical client is 40-45 years old. We examine the personnel of such well-known Russian corporations as Gazprom or LUKOIL, for example. There are employees of four or five major Russian banks, including VTB, among the clients."
Those who treat their health somewhat irresponsibly, get to Western doctors, as a rule, with a bouquet of occupational diseases: obesity, curvature of the spine, etc. Examination of one person costs almost ?5 thousand . For comparison: this is five times cheaper than the minimum cost of elective surgery in the same clinic.
Doctors are confident that Russian patients – both ordinary staff and superiors – will soon realize that it is much more profitable to monitor their health by undergoing medical examinations and doing prevention every year than paying for the treatment of a neglected disease.
Portal "Eternal youth" www.vechnayamolodost.ru
29.02.2008