A private health service that offers employees ad-hoc rapid access to mental health care across the UK has been launched.
The service, called Rapid Access, has been set up by outpatient mental healthcare provider Onebright. It aims to make this type of care more widely accessible and help reduce waiting times for mental health assessments and therapy, as well as reducing absenteeism.
Under the scheme, employers can refer their staff to the service on an ad-hoc basis. Employees are then given an appointment with a clinical expert “within days”, the provider said.
Onebright said the scheme “is particularly helpful for organisations with employees who have symptoms of anxiety and depression, work-related stress and addictive behaviours”.
The provider has also launched a return on investment (ROI) calculator to help employers work out the value of offering mental health care to their employees.
It assesses the impact of absences, lower productivity, and additional costs such as national insurance contributions.
According to the ROI calculator, the average cost to a business of an absent employee is £212 a day.
The provider said that each business, employee and illness is unique, but using this average cost, a business of 100 employees could save more than £42,000 in a year by reducing the number of absences for each employee by two days. As the tool only looks at the direct cost of absences, businesses could potentially save more as the impact of reduced absence on other employees and workflows has value.
Last year, the Centre for Mental Ill Health found that the economic cost of mental ill health in England in 2022 was £110 billion. It said these losses included the business costs of sickness absence and ‘presenteeism’ at work, as well as staff turnover and worklessness among people with mental ill health.
Analysis by Deloitte in 2022 found that for every £1 employers invest in mental health there will be a return on investment of £5 on average.
Alison Bromley, head of partnerships at Onebright said: “Being able to speak to a clinical expert and access the right evidence-based treatment quickly makes a huge difference to outcomes, and is one of the most important factors when thinking about the effectiveness of therapy and treatments.
“Mental health support within businesses is no longer a nice to have, or solely part of duty of care responsibilities, rather it is a smart business decision that will not only help you to maintain a healthy and active workforce, but it will also directly impact, and improve, productivity, workplace culture and the bottom line.”
