We do not charge for case management time (external case management costs start at £1,000 and can increase significantly as case time increases).
Any treatment costs would be recorded on your claims experience. By exception, where there is a deductible or if you are non-conventionally insured through Zurich, there may be some cost considerations to be aware of. Please discuss this further with your usual Zurich sales contact.
Treatment costs vary on a case-by-case basis and no two injuries are the same. We have a contracted national network of suppliers and have been able to negotiate favourable rates for a number of treatment types. As an example, the typical cost of a course of physiotherapy would be around £300.
We will take into consideration the rehab claims experience when reviewing your renewal premium. Using the rehab offering and providing our team with early notification of injuries will be viewed as taking a proactive approach to risk management and evidence that you are taking appropriate and responsible steps to attempt to mitigate losses. However, treatment costs will be included in review. Please remember that our case management service is free of charge for all customers.
Our rehabilitation offering should not impact on these in any way, but it is good for us to have an understanding of your current arrangements so that we can work alongside these.
If you have occupational health (OH) teams onsite, they will still be responsible for managing employees’ return to work, including reasonable adjustments and any capability decisions on medical grounds. Our service aims to complement your existing HR and OH policies and arrangements.
We can work with you to utilise your own onsite services, but you’ll need to tell us about your current arrangements so we can understand how this would work and how we would cover the cost. We may then need to discuss this further with the Zurich Rehabilitation General Insurance manager.
In principle, you can use their services. If you provide us with their contact details we can see if they are already within our existing network or look to get them added and incorporate the necessary service-level agreement and report request to benchmark against our approved providers.
We would recommend that you keep your employee assistance helpline in place, as this is a different type of service, to which employees are typically able to self-refer.
If you think an employee has an injury that meets our criteria and the employee consents to our involvement, then the Zurich Rehabilitation General Insurance offering may also support.
Even if we only complete an assessment and confirm that they are able to self-manage, our team may be able to offer useful guidance during that initial discussion.
For a referral into the scheme to be considered appropriate, the injury must have occurred within the last six months and be as a direct result of a workplace incident.
To proceed with a referral, we’ll need the following information:
All documentation should be sent to our central inbox at mmc@uk.zurich.com or provided via our online portal.
No. We only take injuries sustained within the scope of our policy cover. This does not include injuries sustained when the employee is not fulfilling work duties in accordance with their job description. Any provision for non-workplace injuries would be seen as a perk and liable to UK tax implications.
The Zurich Injury Rehabilitation Service does not provide this level of provision, but you may have this cover elsewhere, such as through a group income protection policy or private health insurance.
If the incident occurs while the employee is driving under the scope of their job description, then we would provide cover under the rehabilitation scheme.
If they were involved in a road traffic incident on their commute to or from work, then no cover would be provided under the scheme.
If they are injured whilst in a public place during their duties, then this would be covered under the scope of the scheme.
We do not, due to the different healthcare arrangements that exist. From past experience we have found it difficult to demonstrate any benefits, as people are already paying for their own treatment.
We can provide intervention for workplace trauma–related anxiety that is directly linked to a specific incident at work.
Where an employee is reporting general symptoms of stress and anxiety due to issues within the workplace, such as harassment, we can offer limited intervention (capped in the number of sessions offered) as the root cause of such stress and anxiety may also include other factors beyond your control.
Any treatment for stress cases relating to factors outside of work, such as relationship issues at home or bereavement, would not be suitable for a Zurich Rehabilitation General Insurance referral.
In these instances, we would recommend using an employee assistance helpline if your company has access to such a service, or directing them to occupational health or their GP.
If their GP is unable to offer immediate support, and there is no access to an employee assistance programme, then please contact us, as we may be able to offer a short-term solution via Zurich Support Services.
The eligibility of RSI cases within the scheme is dependent on the cause of the injury and is generally considered on a case-by-case basis.
We are usually unable to accept cases of RSI unless the primary cause of the repetitive motion has been eliminated from their workload duty going forward.
Even then, our input would be limited, with the focus being to get them referred to the NHS for continued management after we had provided a limited course of interim physiotherapy.
If the employee is returning to the same duty, we would advise that they seek treatment under the NHS, as the focus at this point would simply be on managing the injury and its symptoms, which we cannot assist with under the scheme; they should be overseen by occupational health and HR if they are unable to continue with their role.
If this person has received an RSI from undertaking a new process that has since been removed from their daily activity, then please do refer them or call us to discuss the options.
The scheme is in place to manage workplace injuries. Hearing loss, cumulative back strain, asthma and dermatitis are conditions or diseases.
We do not offer rehabilitation for these types of cases, which are about managing the risk and minimising the exposure to limit the effects on employees’ health. We would expect you to involve your occupational health teams in monitoring this and putting into place any reasonable adjustments.
Referrals for workplace injuries will be accepted from the date that your cover started with Zurich. We are unable to accept any referrals for accidents that occurred prior to the inception of your Zurich policy.
It is important to remember that the sooner you refer an injured employee to us, the greater the benefit will be.
If you have been on cover for six months prior to your knowledge of the rehabilitation scheme, then we can look at these cases retrospectively to see if we might be able to offer support.
Your employees need to be aware of the referral and understand why we are getting involved. The scheme offers them early access to professional medical expertise and demonstrates your commitment to their health and wellbeing.
It is important they consent to the referral and to the sharing of their contact details with the Zurich Rehabilitation General Insurance team. We will require details of the accident, their contact details and their date of birth. As this is personal data, you will also need their consent to send it on to us.
We will initially contact them via telephone and undertake a number of checks to confirm their identity and outline the scheme further.
The information you give to your employees prior to this call is important, as it will set their expectations of the rehabilitation scheme and the support we can offer.
We want to avoid cold calling your employees, as this sets the wrong tone at the start of their therapeutic relationship with their rehabilitation case manager and has the potential to undermine the benefits of the scheme.
You cannot force your employee to accept the offer and we would encourage you to position the rehabilitation scheme as a benefit rather than using it as a management tool.
We would, however, recommend that you document that you made the offer and record their response, as this could be used as a potential failure-to-mitigate argument if they submit a claim at a later date and are then looking for treatment.
We can provide documents outlining both the general benefits of the scheme and more detailed information about what your employees can expect from the scheme and their rehabilitation case manager. We can share these with you in PDF format.
We will also write to your employee at the point where we accept the referral and include a copy of our information brochure.
In most cases the NHS does a great job, particularly in the acute stages of an injury. For example, if you break your leg and are taken to A&E, you will be seen fairly quickly, perhaps undergo surgery and possibly require a short inpatient stay. While you are in hospital, you would be seen by a consultant and physiotherapy team prior to discharge and then referred to outpatient services for further treatment after your discharge.
In some areas, there can be delays in obtaining access to outpatient physiotherapy services, or the number of treatment sessions may be limited. This is where the rehab team would consider stepping in and arranging private physiotherapy to expedite access to treatment and, in turn, speed up recovery timeframes.
In addition, there are some areas where treatment is best delivered through multidisciplinary teams within the NHS, where the private sector provision is sporadic, inadequate and/or fragmented, and this could disadvantage the injured party. As healthcare professionals, we act as an advocate for the injured party and are professionally and ethically bound to ensure they get the right treatment at the right time and in the right place, and to ensure that their treatment plan has no detrimental effect on their wellbeing.
Our rehab offering is not private medical insurance, as we allocate specific funding for referrals where we can see that this will assist in achieving a quicker recovery, and so help your injured employee to return to work in a more timely manner.
The rehab offering is not designed to replace any existing private health insurance (PHI) cover that you may already have in place for your employees.
PHI cover can often have tax implications and we want the rehab scheme to provide free support for your injured employees without them incurring any personal costs.
This is a personal choice depending on your existing circumstances, and we would recommend that you contact us to review the options available to you.
Some customers utilise their PHI cover in the first instance and then use Zurich’s rehab offering to pick up any shortfall in the level of cover. This would be dependent on the Zurich Rehabilitation General Insurance team being involved from the outset and monitoring the progress of the injured party, to ensure smooth progression of the two services.
Other customers have distinguished between the two in different ways, for example, by using their PHI where the cover includes accidents outside of work, and the Zurich rehab offering for all workplace incidents that meet the referral criteria.
The rehabilitation case manager will provide a summary to your main referral contact following completion of the initial assessment and at any key points thereafter. You will also receive notification when the case is closed.
If you have an occupational health department, we may share more detailed reports with them, providing we have the explicit consent of the employee.
We can be contacted via telephone to discuss these kinds of scenarios on a case-by-case basis. You can still refer an employee even if they have not lost any time but continue to struggle within the workplace or their duties as a result of a workplace injury.
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