When cover works for members, HR teams, and everyone in between
Riaan Nel, Head of Strategy Deployment and Experience Improvement at Medihelp Medical Aid
As healthcare systems grow in sophistication, the challenge for medical schemes remains the same: delivering clarity.
For employers, HR teams, and members alike, complexity in healthcare administration can create unnecessary friction at every touchpoint, from onboarding employees to understanding benefits and accessing support. Increasingly, simplifying that experience is becoming a business priority.
For Riaan Nel, Head of Strategy Deployment and Experience Improvement at Medihelp Medical Aid, simplifying healthcare systems is central to improving both member well-being and organisational efficiency.
His role includes strategic execution, operational oversight, and customer experience improvement, ensuring that what exists on paper becomes meaningful in practice.
Working towards simplicity
“Healthcare is a complex service,” says Nel. “We can’t necessarily remove all the complexity, but what we can do is simplify it for our members. They shouldn’t have to deal with the complexity that goes on in the background. They should, instead, experience a clean and refreshingly simple process.”
This is becoming increasingly important in modern workplaces. For HR teams managing hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of employees, healthcare administration can be an overwhelming burden. Employee onboarding, plan changes, dependant updates, and wellness education all require time and resources that businesses would rather direct towards their core operations.
Noticing, and easing, the HR load
At large corporations, where employee churn can be high, the administrative load increases sharply. Medihelp has responded by investing in systems designed to reduce that pressure.
Its Corporate Zone platform gives HR teams a single point of access to help them manage healthcare administration more efficiently.
This includes a recent bulk-upload feature that allows businesses to onboard multiple employees simultaneously via payroll system integration.
“We want it to be seamless for them, so they can get back to focusing on the running of their normal corporate operations,” says Nel.
“People often underestimate the administrative workload for HR personnel. So there’s a big focus within Medihelp to ease that administrative burden and give big corporations one platform they can use to do just about everything medical scheme-related.”
Members don’t, and shouldn’t have to, speak in code
But simplifying healthcare systems is not only about efficiency. It’s also about empowering members to make informed decisions about their health and well-being.
One of the biggest barriers, as Nel explains, is that healthcare systems often “speak in code”. Procedure codes, benefit structures, exclusions, authorisations, and industry terminology may make sense to providers and administrators – but rarely to members.
“People don’t speak in code,” he says. “While in-house Medihelp staff and others in healthcare understand it, our members don’t work with it every day. So how do we explain it to them so they can understand what they’re covered or not covered for?”
This lack of clarity can have serious downstream consequences. Preventive benefits often go unused if members are unaware of them or don’t fully understand how to access them.
The fallout ultimately affects both employee health outcomes and employer productivity.
Greater understanding leads to better use of preventive screenings
“We really want our members to use each and every benefit available to them,” he says.
“If medical aid is so complex that you don’t even know which free benefits you can access, members can’t be expected to fully utilise those preventive benefits – and this can lead to more severe medical repercussions down the line.”
The goal is not to oversimplify healthcare itself but to simplify the experience surrounding it: from intuitive digital tools and clearer communication to supported self-service and more personalised engagement across multiple channels.
Medihelp’s recent shift towards an omnichannel support approach reflects this thinking. Rather than treating each member interaction as an isolated query, the organisation is working hard to achieve a more connected member journey, supported by a single, holistic view that brings together emails, calls, digital engagement, and chatbot interactions.
Value of the human element
“We want to meet our members where they’re at,” says Nel. “We really want to maintain the human element.”
A human-centred philosophy in the medical schemes environment is especially important because members, who may have had medical aid for years or even decades, often engage fully with their scheme only at the most stressful moments of their lives.
“Members don’t engage with us when they’re healthy and happy,” Nel says.
“They reach out when they’ve been in a car accident, when they’re seriously ill, or when a loved one is struggling with a health issue. We want to provide a high-impact service in all those critical moments.”
As in cricket, a calm front wins the day
In many ways, simplifying healthcare systems mirrors a disciplined cricket innings. The game itself is deeply technical: full of strategy, statistics, and split-second decisions. Yet the best teams make it look easy.
The same applies to healthcare administration: the complexity may remain behind the scenes, but the experience delivered to members and HR teams should feel seamless, intuitive, and calm under pressure.
For Nel, who unwinds by playing cricket with his son in the garden, the metaphor feels particularly fitting.
Success is rarely about flashy moves. It’s about consistency, clear communication, teamwork, and removing unnecessary obstacles so that people (members and HR departments) can focus on what matters most.
Ultimately, the future of healthcare cover may not depend on making healthcare itself simpler.
Instead, it may rely on making it feel effortless for those who trust in it every day.
Loading ...