GEMS - working harder to make a difference for you

Friday, 21 June 2013

If you put your members at the heart of everything you do and focus on making a difference in their lives, others will be encouraged to join your medical scheme and existing members will become your brand ambassadors. This belief is at the core of everything the Government Employees Medical Scheme (GEMS) does, says Dr Stan Moloabi, GEMS Acting Principal Officer.

Since its inception eight years ago:

• GEMS has matured into South Africa's second largest medical scheme.
• It is responsible for more than 670 000 principal members and 1.8 million lives.
• Over 60% of all eligible public service employees are on the Scheme.
• GEMS remains the fastest growing medical scheme in South Africa.
• On a monthly basis it receives 7 000 applications to join the Scheme.
• More than 55% of its members did not previously have access to healthcare cover.
• By 2012 over 660 000 principal members were enrolled on to the Scheme and 15 600 pensioners migrated to GEMS, representing a growth of 11.2%.
• GEMS remains the largest contributor to the overall growth of the medical scheme sector and represented 20.3% of the sector by the end of June 2012.
• The Scheme's non-healthcare expenditure, which includes administration costs, is half the industry average of 12% and was well contained at 6.3% in 2012.
• Over 12 500 healthcare providers are now registered on friends of GEMS ensuring that almost 90% of its members are now located within 10km of a GEMS network provider.
  

Dr Moloabi reiterates that "With the health and wellbeing of more than 1.8 million lives in our hands we do not take this responsibility lightly within GEMS. Our entire team accepts that what was sufficient when we were in our infancy is no longer the case," he observes. Therefore we have made 2013 the year of sustaining member value through excellence and innovation, says Moloabi.

Further, GEMS engages in on-going research to track the satisfaction levels of its members with respect to various aspects of the Scheme's services, he reveals. Findings from the 2012 satisfaction survey indicated that 86% of GEMS' members are satisfied with the Scheme - an increase of 2% when compared to the 2011 survey and 87% of those surveyed had every confidence in the Scheme. The overall level of satisfaction implies a high level of confidence and trust in GEMS and strong brand loyalty. Almost half of the respondents said there is nothing they would change about GEMS, affirming the high satisfaction ratings that GEMS has received over the years.

To ensure that we are able to consistently provide value to our members and those planning on joining our Scheme, we piloted a Client Liaison Business (CLO) unit between June 2011 and June 2013. This unit serviced our members at their place of work in Gauteng, says Liziwe Nkonyana, Executive: Communications and Member Affairs at GEMS.

In that period, the Client Liaison Business (CLO) unit engaged over 25 500 public service employees - 20 092 of which were GEMS members and more than 24 000 queries were resolved in the process, says Nkonyana.

Based on the above successes the Board of Trustees resolved to make the unit a permanent feature in the GEMS service offering and went further to approve that the unit be rolled out nationally over a period of four years.