Montréal-based Dialogue is partnering with Canada Life, an insurance, wealth management, and benefits provider, to make virtual healthcare a standard benefit for employers with Canada Life group benefits plans.
“As demand for virtual healthcare continues to grow, working with Canada Life … is an important step towards improving access to quality care.”
Through this new benefit, employers and their dependents will be able to chat live with a registered nurse or see a physician through a secure video consultation, for various health and medical issues, to receive diagnoses, medical advice, prescriptions, or specialist referrals. The virtual care offering will be automatically available for Canada Life group benefits that 400 plan members or less. Essentially, if an organization that uses Canada Life benefits has 400, or fewer employees, all of those employees will now have virtual health care services.
“As demand for virtual healthcare continues to grow, working with Canada Life to integrate Dialogue as a standard benefit is an important step towards improving access to quality care for all Canadians,” said Cherif Habib, CEO of Dialogue, adding that the partnership will give more than one million Canadians easier access to high-quality health care.
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According to a white paper from the Canadian Medical Association, billing regulations in health insurance plans within individual jurisdictions is the largest barrier to the widespread adoption of virtual care between physicians and their patients.
Canada Life claims it is the first insurer in Canada to make virtual health care a standard benefit, however, it is not the first to offer virtual healthcare through employee benefits. Sun Life Financial Canada also includes such services to its group and individual insurance plans.
The partnership between Dialogue and Canada Life comes one month after Dialogue acquired Argumed Consulting Group, a German-based Occupational Health and Safety services company. In December, Dialogue partnered with Doctor On Demand to give enterprise clients the ability to offer virtual healthcare to employees visiting the US.
In the fall, Dialogue also launched the second phase of its Stress Management and Well-Being program, which offers resources to employers who wish to provide proactive and convenient mental health and healthcare support to employees.
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“We are always open to smart collaborations that help support the financial, physical, and mental well-being of Canadians, and our relationship with Dialogue is a great example of this,” said Ryan Weiss, vice president of product and experience at Canada Life’s group customer division. “Together we’ve developed a streamlined, proprietary virtual healthcare solution that will give more than one million Canadians easier access to high-quality healthcare.”
Employees and their dependents will have access to Dialogue’s virtual healthcare platform through Canada Life starting this summer.
Canada Life is a collective of Great-West Life, London Life, and Canada Life, which joined to become one company as of January 1, 2020.
Image source Pixabay
UPDATE 06/03/2020: This story has been updated to reflect that the virtual healthcare benefits will be automatically available to companies using Canada Life that have 400 or fewer employees.