How you can use preventative care to lower your bills

Managing your healthcare costs and trying to stay healthy can be difficult. In South Africa, people often face significant challenges in accessing quality healthcare, owing to the high costs associated with it. That’s why preventative healthcare can help. Preventative healthcare helps you stay healthy while lowering your healthcare bills. 

What is Preventative Care?

Preventative care is also known as preventive healthcare. Preventative care is a range of healthcare services that aim to prevent illnesses, diseases, and other health problems before they occur. Preventative healthcare is also a key intervention for detecting illnesses, diseases, and health problems early when they're most treatable. This proactive approach to health management includes regular check-ups, screenings, vaccinations, and lifestyle modifications.

The Economic Benefits of Prevention

Research has consistently shown that investing in preventative care can lead to significant cost savings, at three different levels. Preventative healthcare can help you save money, by helping you stay healthy and clear from the effects of significant diseases, conditions, or illnesses. Preventative healthcare services also help the public sector save money. According to Statistics South Africa, during the 2019/20 fiscal year, the nine provincial administrations in South Africa spent R125.6 billion on hospital services, which accounted for 61% of total healthcare expenditure. Preventative healthcare can help curb this spending. In the private sector too, preventative healthcare helps to cut down on expensive medical services and procedures. This, in turn, leads to cost savings for private sector healthcare providers, medical schemes, and medical insurance providers. When you use preventative healthcare services, everyone saves money in the long run, while you improve your quality of life. 

What are Preventative Healthcare Services? 

Preventative healthcare services include:

• Regular health screenings: Regular health screenings help with the early detection of potential health issues. These include blood pressure checks, cholesterol screenings, Diabetes screenings, Cancer screenings, mammograms, colonoscopies, vision tests, and hearing tests.  
• Vaccinations: When you stay up to date with recommended vaccinations, you help to prevent the spread of a wide range of infectious diseases. Moreover, you protect yourself and your health too. This helps you avoid the potentially high costs associated with treating these illnesses.
• Annual check-ups: Regular visits to your healthcare provider enable you to benefit from ongoing health monitoring. Annual check-ups can help identify risk factors for chronic diseases and provide opportunities for health education and counselling.
• Lifestyle modifications: Your healthcare provider may recommend some lifestyle changes if they are concerned about your wellbeing. Adopting healthy lifestyle habits is perhaps the most cost-effective form of preventative care. Keep to a balanced diet, and ensure you get regular exercise. Make sure you get adequate sleep, and try to manage your stress levels. Avoiding or cutting back on your alcohol and tobacco consumption will also contribute towards an improvement in your overall health. A healthy lifestyle significantly reduces your risk of developing chronic diseases, which become costly to manage over time.
• Dental and eye care: Regular vision and hearing tests can help your healthcare provider spot problems early on. For example, your dentist can help you stop the development of serious dental problems, saving you money in the long run. Similarly, routine eye exams can detect vision problems early and help maintain good eye health.

Preventative Healthcare Keeps Your Medical Bills Low

Preventative care helps to lower your medical bills. Preventative healthcare detects and addresses health issues early, so you can avoid costly treatments, surgeries, and long-term medication regimens. Proactive healthcare management also reduces your likelihood of emergency room visits and their associated high costs. Early intervention can lower or eliminate expenses related to chronic condition medications. Overall improved health leads to fewer doctor visits and less time off work, which leads to direct and indirect savings. Additionally, many medical insurance plans, including those from Get Medical Insurance, offer preventative care services at little to no cost, enabling you to benefit from essential healthcare without incurring extra expenses. This comprehensive approach to preventative care improves your health and significantly reduces your healthcare costs in the long run.

At Get Medical Insurance, we believe that access to quality preventative care is important for maintaining good health and managing healthcare costs. We're committed to helping South Africans access affordable, comprehensive healthcare coverage that prioritises prevention.