While a new report shows that introducing a tax on employer-paid health benefits would add $3.8 billion to the federal government’s coffers in the 2018 tax year, it would also dramatically raise health-care costs for many Canadians, according to the Canadian Life and Health Insurance Association. Tasked with measuring the federal fiscal impact of including employer-paid health […]
Julie Holden is principal of a new workplace health consultancy, Holden & Associates. Since July 2014, she worked at SEB Benefits & HR Consulting Inc., most recently as a senior vice-president. Holden’s career has spanned a number of consulting firms in roles that include: absence and disability management leader, health and productivity leader and assistant vice-president of […]
Green Shield Canada is offering plan members who suffer from chronic pain free access to a mobile app that tracks their pain, analyzes it and shares the data with their health-care providers. The pilot project, in partnership with Toronto-based startup ManagingLife Inc., also gives participants bonus points and access to rewards through the insurer’s incentive-based health […]
The Reformulary Group Inc. has formed a cannabis formulary committee that will review evidence for medical marijuana and provide expert opinions and criteria for its use, including lines of therapy, specific strains, grams per indication, mode of consumption and quantity limits. The committee is also aiming to create a registry to capture patient-reported data, which […]
Toronto-based health company Medcan is introducing a health benefits program that includes telemedicine, pharmacogenetics and online health modules. More than 100 plan sponsors are currently using the program, which will continue to be rolled out to employers throughout 2018, according to the company’s president, Ashim Khemani. He notes it’s open to all employees, even though Medcan […]
Employee health services company HumanaCare has acquired Toronto-based virtual health platform TranQool. In addition to delivering health care virtually, the acquisition will allow HumanaCare to expand its existing employee assistance programs, medical second opinion, disability support, caregiving and health-care navigation and chronic disease management services, according to its president, Jamie Marcellus. Read: 2018 Group Benefits Providers […]
It’s not often that the issues relevant to benefits plans emerge as an area of focus in the political realm. But with votes up for grabs and politicians eager to find any way to harness them, it appears issues of drugs and dental care are moving up the political agenda. In the federal arena, the […]
Who wouldn’t want a coach to help with achieving health goals? According to the 2017 Sanofi Canada health-care survey, health coaching is a popular idea: 61 per cent of plan members expressed interest in coaching around personal health goals. But is health coaching a worthy investment for employers to include as a benefit for their […]
Employer-sponsored drug plan spending increased 2.5 per cent from 2016 to 2017, according to Express Scripts Canada’s latest drug trend report. “The trend was fairly moderate in terms of the year-over-year increase that we saw,” says John Herbert, director of strategy, product development and clinical services at Express Scripts. “But there’s still cause for concern when we […]
Health-care costs are projected to increase a whopping 130 per cent over the next eight years after a period of relatively flat growth, according to a study published by Mercer in 2017. One of the key drivers is rising drug costs, with expensive specialty medications and gene therapies making up the majority of new products in development. So […]