Ways to Stretch Your Medical Aid Benefits

Maybe you are one of those people whose medical savings run out before half the year has gone by. This often causes big hassles with medical aid benefits, such as running out of chronic medication or delaying important procedures. This is no good for your health.

It doesn’t have to be this way! There is help close at hand – no further away than your local pharmacy.

Waheed Abdurahman, a Clicks pharmacist, points out that if you take your pharmacist into your confidence, he or she can actually help you to stretch your medical aid benefits.

“Some of the ways we go about this are free preventative health screenings, which are paid out of the risk portion of the medical scheme cover, and instead paying for visits to doctors and specialists from the medical savings portion.

These regular health checks give early warning of medical conditions, enabling fast action, which can also help to stretch medical aid benefits.”

Medical Aid Benefits

Here are some more important tips for making your medical aid benefits go further:

MEDICAL AID MANAGEMENT GUIDE FOR AVOIDING OUT OF POCKET EXPENSES

•    Medical schemes charge a levy or co-payments when customers shop outside the approved designated or preferred service provider network. Make sure your pharmacist is on the approved Designated Service Provider network.
•    Choose a generic alternative.  Medical schemes are more likely to pay in full for a generic medicine, which use the same active ingredient, strength and dosage form as original brand medicines.
•    Find out if your chronic medication is on the approved formulary list, which is paid for at a specially negotiated rate by your medical aid.
•    Most pharmacies do not charge administration fees, so if yours does, shop around.
•    Tap into your pharmacy’s reward programme – e.g. Clicks ClubCard members earn ClubCard points off the dispensing fee.
•    Have essential medicines handy to treat symptoms fast and use the OTC (Over-The-Counter) benefit that covers self-medication.

All info was correct at time of publishing