Love a break

We all love holidays! If you’re thinking about travelling overseas, one of the most important things you need to consider is travel insurance, as your health fund membership doesn’t cover overseas medical services. You may also want to consider travel insurance when travelling within Australia to protect your pre-paid travel arrangements against cancellation, getting sick or having an accident.

Either way, QBE and Peoplecare have a travel insurance policy to suit your needs at discounted prices.

It’s simple to take out a policy by calling us on 1800 808 700 or visiting our website here.

 

Direct debits

We’ve had a few technical glitches with our direct debit membership payments over the last 3-4 days. We’re doing everything we can to get it fixed as soon as possible and are trying our best to minimise the impact on HICAPS claims. We hope this hasn’t affected many members, but if you have any issues, please give us a buzz on 1800 808 690.

 

Our brand new optical and dental centre opens on Monday!

Doors to Peoplecare Eyes & Teeth open on Monday 3 December, and we’re all very excited!

Our new centre at 63 Market Street, Wollongong, offers bulk billed eye tests with state-of-the-art optical technology and a range of designer glasses to choose from – all with great eyecare service and competitive prices.

And because we all love convenience, from mid January you’ll be able to keep your teeth healthy at the same time with our brand new dental surgeries. We’ll have the latest technology and well-qualified, experienced dentists to make sure that your teeth get the best care possible.

And if you’ve got Extras cover with Peoplecare, you’ll get*:

• A range of gap-free eyewear
• 25% off our entire range of glasses, contacts and sunglasses (if you can't find something you love in our gap-free range)
• Gap-free preventative dental (this covers consultation, scale & clean, x-rays and fluoride)
• Lower out of pocket costs for other dental services

If you don’t have Extras cover with Peoplecare, don’t worry! You’ll still get 25% off our entire range of glasses, contacts and sunglasses, as well as lower out of pocket costs for dental services.

Of course, you don’t have to be with Peoplecare to visit us. Everyone’s welcome and we’d love to see you there, so drop by 63 Market Street, Wollongong (across the road from the old Ibis Hotel), give us a call on 1300 574 778 or email peoplecareeyesandteeth.com.au.

For more info check out www.peoplecare.com.au/eyesandteeth.

The boring but necessary fine print:
* ‘Gap-free means there are no out of pocket expenses for the member on a selected range of glasses or dental treatments (as long as your annual optical or dental limit hasn’t been used). The range of gap-free glasses will depend on your fund benefit.‘Lower out of pocket costs’ for dental means that the schedule of dental fees are discounted for Peoplecare members. Offer ends 30 June 2013. Not available with any other offer.

 

 

Check out our new Pocket Peoplecarer iPhone app!

We're excited to launch our brand new first aid iPhone app, which will give you access to handy first aid info and suggestions for things to take with you when you're out and about.

You can also:
plan an activity create a checklist of what to bring along share it with a friend by email, Facebook and Twitter get weather info access emergency services info

 

You can download our free Pocket Peoplecarer app from the iTunes App Store.
 

 

Expressions of Interest – Board of Directors

Peoplecare will have two Director positions open for election at the 2012 Annual General Meeting, as a result of our normal director rotation cycles.

Ms Jacqueline Jennings, who has been an elected director of Peoplecare for 3 years, is required to retire due to the ending of her current term.  Jacqueline has offered herself for re-election.

Mr Alan Gibbs, who has been an elected director of Peoplecare for 6 years, is required to retire due to the ending of his current term.  Alan has offered himself for re-election.

The two vacancies that occur due to the end of Ms Jennings’ and Mr Gibbs’ current terms are therefore available to be filled by any eligible qualified persons and the information provided on this webpage is to assist members to determine if they wish to apply for the vacant elected position.

If you are interested in nominating for this position as a director of Lysaght Peoplecare Ltd (ABN 95 087 648 753) further details on the process are available on our website at www.peoplecare.com.au/agm2012/DirectorElection

Expressions of interest for the 2012 Election of Directors must be received by 5:00pm on Friday 31 August 2012.
 

 

Introducing My Health Online!

This is our latest service for members with hospital cover, and we’re all a bit excited. With My Health Online, you can fill in a Health Risk Assessment (which asks you a bunch of questions about your health and gives you a personalised health report), as well as store e-health info about yourself, keep a calendar of healthcare reminders, access a health library and much more. And best of all, it’s free with our hospital cover! For more info check the Your Health section of our website. 

 

Tax Statements 2011/2012

We're mailing out all member tax statements by 16 July. If you need yours earlier, we've put it online so you can view it now. You can access it by logging into your membership.

 

The Australian Government Rebate on private health insurance

There are some important changes to the Australian Government Rebate on private health insurance that will come into effect from 1 July 2012. We'll be mailing all our members in mid-June as we've just got all the info we need from the ATO.

For more info and to see if it will affect you, click here peoplecare.com.au/rebate. You can nominate your new rebate tier here too.

 

Pay in advance by 30 June 2012 to lock in your rebate

Our call centre closes at 5pm today, Friday 29 June 2012, but we’ll be working hard in the background to make sure everything is ready to go for the rebate changes on Sunday. So, if you want to pay a year in advance to lock in your current rebate amount – there’s still time! You can pay by credit card through Online Services until 5pm tomorrow. Remember, this is your last chance to pay in advance, on Sunday 1 July the rebate changes will be in full swing and we won’t be able to backdate any payments. If you’ve got any questions drop us a line anytime on our Facebook page, or check out the rebate section on our website http://www.peoplecare.com.au/rebate.

 

Peoplecare Starts at Home - first aid initiative 

Last year we launched our new first aid education initiative, 'Peoplecare Starts at Home'. This program aimed to equip Peoplecare members and the Illawarra and Shoalhaven community with first aid skills for dealing with emergencies. We're thrilled that it was a huge success, so we've decided to run it again between March and June this year.

This year, we're extending the program to include some specialised first aid courses and we'd like to invite you to take part in any of these sessions for free.  All sessions are hosted by Peoplecare and facilitated by Wollongong First Aid.

o      General First Aid - sessions for adults and children 12 years old and over, covering basic first aid procedures

o      First Aid for Kids - designed to educate children (5 - 11 years old) on how to respond to basic emergency situations

o      First Aid for New Parents - tailored specially to parents with babies and toddlers

For more info, or if you'd like to register yourself, your family or friends, just go to our online booking system at  http://events.peoplecare.com.au.

If you're not in the area, we don't want you to miss out, so: 

o      all members will also be able to get special discounts on any first aid education and supplies through Wollongong 
        First Aid www.wollongongfirstaid.com.au

 1 March 2012

 

Changes to the private health insurance rebate

Changes to the private health insurance rebate were passed in the lower house of Parliament on Wednesday 15 February 2012 and will soon be legislation. The changes mean that the private health insurance rebate will be means-tested from 1 July 2012. If you earn under $83K (single) or $166K (family) per year, you won't be affected. We’re working through the details and will be sending all members more info over the coming weeks. Peoplecare will do everything we can to make this transition easy for our members.

 

More online claiming

Our convenient 24 x 7 online member services has just got even better! As of 1 November 2011, you can now claim for Occupational Therapy & Speech Therapy. To check out the full list of things you can claim for, and to start claiming today, click here.  

 

Annual Report 2011

Our 2011 annual report is ready and you can view it  here. If you'd prefer a hard copy version, simply drop us an email at info@peoplecare.com.au and we'll send you one out.

 

IPSOS Health Insurance Research

During August IPSOS Research will be phoning a random sample of 2,000 of our members to find out what their thoughts are about private health insurance. Just give us a buzz if you’d like to know more!

 

Social media comp – and the winner is...

Thank you to our wonderful members who have turned out in their hundreds to support our new social media pages. We now have over 1,400 Facebook fans since our launch on 10 June 2011, which is staggering! And the best thing of all is that so many members stopped by to post their personal stories about Peoplecare. We loved hearing from each and every one of you.

Huge congrats to the lucky winner of our Facebook competition.  Malcolm Lower of QLD will soon be the proud new owner of an iPad2. 

 

Expressions of Interest – Board of Directors

Peoplecare will have one Director position open for election at the 2011 Annual General Meeting, as a result of our normal director rotation cycles.

Ms Janelle Bond, who has been an elected director of Peoplecare for six years, is required to retire due to the ending of her current term.  Janelle has offered herself for re-election.

The vacancy that occurs due to the end of Ms Bond’s current term is therefore available to be filled by any eligible qualified person

If you are interested in nominating for this position as a director of Lysaght Peoplecare Ltd (ABN 95 087 648 753) further details on the process are available on our website at www.peoplecare.com.au/agm2011/DirectorElection

Expressions of interest for the 2011 Election of Directors must be received by 5:00pm on Friday 26th August 2011.
 

 

Tax Statements 2010/2011

We're mailing out all member tax statements by 14 July! If you need yours earlier, you can get one online now by logging into your membership.

 

Peoplecare takes Facebook by storm

Peoplecare has successfully launched a new Facebook page, achieving the largest Facebook following of all the Australian health funds just a few days after the official launch. This is a significant achievement considering Peoplecare is one of the smaller national health funds.

The Facebook page was launched to Peoplecare members just before close of business on Friday, 10 June 2011 and by the end of the long weekend, Peoplecare had around 1000 ‘fans’ register on the page and over 150 unsolicited wall posts by members sharing their positive experiences of the Illawarra-based national health fund.

‘It just goes to show that we’re in touch with our members in a way that the larger insurers can’t manage,’ said Peoplecare CEO, Michael Bassingthwaighte. ‘We’re all about providing an exceptional service experience with a personal touch and our social media strategy supports this focus 100% by offering members another way to engage with us.’

Peoplecare developed their social media strategy with the aim of creating another communications channel to help their members make sense of the complex health system and to give them access to interesting information about health, first aid and finding their way around the health system. The aim of the Peoplecare Facebook page is to give members a real sense of Peoplecare’s company culture by starting conversations with members.
 

To see the Peoplecare social media channels, visit facebook.com/Peoplecare, twitter.com/Peoplecare and youtube.com/PeoplecareLovePeople.

 

Love happy members

We love hearing your feedback on ways we can improve and where you think we’re doing well. And our Member Satisfaction Survey is the perfect tool for you to have your say.

This year, we had 1,355 members fill in our online Member Satisfaction Survey. Thank you to all of you for taking the time to do the survey and helping us improve our services for all of our members! We’ve had another fantastic result this year - a huge 98.0% of you told us that you’re satisfied with Peoplecare! Our staff are thrilled with this result and so proud to offer exceptional service to our members.

The 2011 survey told us what you thought about our communication, telephone service, written service, website service, claims turnaround, benefits, electronic claiming, and other areas you’ve told us are important to you.

We’ve also created a crack special project team to review the survey results and come up with improvement ideas and projects.

This year we’re working on:

• Ways to make our health covers easier to understand
• Giving members more information about our great value for money
• Writing all of our materials in plain English

Of course, you don’t need to wait for a survey to tell us your thoughts, we always love hearing your ideas and feedback, so drop us an email anytime at info@peoplecare.com.au

 

Lifetime Health Cover deadline - 30 June 2011 

If you know anyone who’s 31 or older, and they don’t have hospital cover, let them know that they need to take cover before 1 July, otherwise their premiums will be higher… For more info check out the information on Lifetime Health Cover. Or just give us a buzz on 1800 808 700 if you'd like to chat about it!
 

 

Peoplecare Rebrand Wins Global Award

Peoplecare’s recent rebrand has won a merit award in the prestigious 2011 REBRAND 100 Global Awards.

Launched in August last year and developed by leading branding agency Principals, our distinctive new look is fresh, cheeky and personal and stands apart from its competitors in the marketplace.

The REBRAND 100 Global Awards are the highest worldwide recognition a rebranding project can achieve. The Awards are judged by an esteemed panel of international business, marketing and design executives, with the ultimate goal of showcasing the most effective brand transformations to the world.

The 2011 Awards were open to any rebrand launched anywhere in the world between January 2008 and September 2010. The rebrand could have been an enterprise-wide initiative, a single component of a brand, or a brand extension. Global organisations, Fortune 50 corporations, small businesses, accomplished entrepreneurs, respected non-profit organisations, cities, and renowned universities from around the world are regularly represented amongst award winners.

For more info and to check out some before and after shots, click here.
 

 

Launch of Peoplecare Starts at Home Initiative

Peoplecare is excited to launch our new first aid education initiative this week.

A recent survey by IRIS Research has shown that 75% of Illawarra residents don’t have an up-to-date first aid qualification and only 1 in 3 people are confident in administering first aid.

To help address this, we’ve launched our Peoplecare Starts at Home program which includes:

For Peoplecare members:
• all Peoplecare members will receive a free First Aid book and emergency contact cards by the end of March
• Illawarra members will be invited to a free first aid education session at 7 locations through the Illawarra and Shoalhaven between March and June 2011. For more info and to make a booking go to http://events.peoplecare.com.au
• all members with Extras cover will be able to claim other accredited first aid courses through their Heath Management benefit
• all members will also be able to get special discounts on any first aid education and supplies through Wollongong First Aid www.wollongongfirstaid.com.au

For the Illawarra community:
We’ve developed free first aid training sessions in conjunction with Wollongong First Aid from March to June 2011.

All community groups who host one of the sessions will receive 10 free First Aid kits and each participant will also receive a Peoplecare First Aid book and emergency contact card.

For more info and to make a booking go to http://events.peoplecare.com.au

10 March 2011 

 

Peoplecare scoops the pool in 2010 Illawarra Business Awards!

We're thrilled to be multiple award-winners at the 2010 Illawarra Business Awards on 12 November.

• Winner - Business of the Year 2010
• Winner - Business Person of the Year (Michael Bassingthwaighte, Peoplecare CEO)
• Winner - Professional & Commercial Services
• Highly Commended - Customer Service
• Finalist - Retail & Personal Services

A huge thanks to our heroes, our staff of Peoplecarers, who give everything they've got to make Peoplecare such a success!

 

A big warm welcome to the new look Peoplecare!

You’ll notice our website looks completely different to our previous website. We’ve decided it’s time for an extreme makeover and we’ve chosen an exciting new look which is distinctive, innovative, stands apart from other health funds and tells the world what we’re all about.

As a member, you already know Peoplecare is about personal service and best possible value for members, and that hasn’t changed. At our very core, we believe personal is best and we wanted our new look to reflect our values:

Love personalised service from real people - We take things personally and we make health insurance personal. We are people who pick up the phone, answer your questions, deal with your question or claim - and love doing it. No voice activated systems. No artificial barriers to communication.

Love making health insurance easier - Health insurance should be easy to join and easy to understand. So we make it easier and better… in the language we use, in the way we design our health covers, in the way we communicate. If you’re not sure how to find your way around the health system, just give us a call – we love helping members!

Love getting better deals and value for money for our members - Our staff know how to get the best deal for you and your family. And our network of partners and suppliers means we get you the best deals and value for money. It’s rare that we can’t beat another fund’s deal, but if that ever happens we’ll say so right up front.

Love being not for profit, so it’s all about our members - We’re proudly not for profit, so we don’t have to pay shareholders or the tax man. Everything we do is for our members and we put everything we’ve got into getting the best member services. The way we see it, we’re all in this together. We’re on your side.

Our new look and feel captures all of this – it’s personal, warm and high energy, just like us! You’ll see that we’ve used pictures that have been lovingly drawn by hand to reflect our ‘personal is best’ philosophy. The stars of our show are our staff and their families, so we’ve featured their photos in our materials. And included some of their stories, so you get to know the real people behind Peoplecare’s success. We’ve got the theme of ‘Love people’ carrying through our communications because our people are all passionate, enthusiastic and love getting the best results for members. And our new colours are warm and vibrant – like the people that work here. So, Peoplecare may have a completely new image, but you’ll be happy to know it’s still us underneath the new look!

 

Love 24 x 7 service

We’ve revamped our website to go with our new look. Check it out at peoplecare.com.au and let us know what you think. You’ll find it as easy to use as it was before, with even more features.

Our online services are a quick & easy way of dealing with Peoplecare whenever it suits you. It’s easy to self-serve with your online member record. You can:

• join Peoplecare
• look at your membership details
• change your address, level of cover or contact details
• make credit card payments
• look at your recent claims
• find a healthcare provider (hospital, Access Gap doctor or HICAPS provider)
• print your tax statement
• read our online newsletter
• order a new membership card
• organise travel insurance
• choose the best level of cover for you
• get healthy recipes and health information 
• online claiming: Dental, Chiro/ Osteo, Physio, Podiatry, Optical (glasses & contacts) & Occupational Therapy -

 

Love a Family Deal

We’ve got an exciting new deal for members with adult kids between the age of 21 and 25.

At Peoplecare, kids can already stay on the family membership for free until they’re 21 (or 25 if they’re studying full-time).

From 1 July 2010 we’re introducing Family Plus cover so members can keep their adult kids on the membership until they’re 25 for an extra 30% on top of the family rate (as long as they’re not married or living with their partner). And this is a flat rate no matter how many kids you add. A great deal that could save you all money!

As usual, if you’d like to have a chat about this, please feel free to call us on 1800 808 690.

 

Love spreading the word

Our members love Peoplecare so much that a third of our new members are friends or family who joined because they know we have fantastic deals and personal service.

So, feel free to spread the word to your mates & rellos. After all, we’re all in this together.

To say thanks, if they join we’ll send you both a free $50 Coles Group & Myer Gift Card and put you both into the draw to WIN your choice of 2 prizes valued at $500 or more!*

Joining’s easy through our website peoplecare.com.au or by phone on 1800 808 700. Just tell them to give us your name when they join so you can both get your thank you gifts!

 

Love a break

We all love holidays! If you’re thinking about travelling overseas, one of the most important things you need to consider is travel insurance, as your health fund membership doesn’t cover overseas medical services. You may also want to consider travel insurance when travelling within Australia to protect your pre-paid travel arrangements against cancellation, getting sick or having an accident.

Either way, QBE and Peoplecare have a travel insurance policy to suit your needs at discounted prices.

It’s simple to take out a policy by calling us on 1 800 808 700 or visiting our website, under Members – Travel Insurance.