Press releases
Legal & General partners with HCI to help empower individuals to take control of their long-term health conditions
Legal & General Group Protection has partnered with long-term condition management support service CONNECTPlus, from HCI (Health and Care Innovations Limited). The evidence-based app will play a central role in the insurer’s personalised multidisciplinary team (MDT) pathways, helping empower individuals to take control of their condition and improve their health – both at home and in the work environment.
14 Apr 2022
- Long-term condition support service now provided, at no extra cost, to all existing and new Group Income Protection (GIP) clients.
- The evidence-based app complements existing personalised multidisciplinary team (MDT) pathways for those living with the long-term impacts of: Stroke, Cancer, Multiple Sclerosis, Type 2 Diabetes, Long Covid and Rheumatoid Arthritis.
- Long Covid is included despite not being currently recognised as a disability under the Equality Act 2010, says Legal & General, in a bid to extend the provider’s early intervention Long Covid service, launched in 2020, to ensure long-term support for what has fast become a chronic condition.1
Available to all insured employees and their immediate family, CONNECTPlus helps support the day-to-day self-management of the following six long-term conditions: Stroke, Cancer, Multiple Sclerosis, Type 2 Diabetes, Long Covid and Rheumatoid Arthritis. Bringing a number of conditions into one place also helps meet the needs of those with more than one long-term condition, says Legal & General.
CONNECTPlus was co-designed with NHS clinicians and patients – and used in various NHS Foundation Trusts – with a view to having the right tools in place to help people actively manage their own care. The potential benefits of self-management include: increased control, saving of time and money, reduced anxiety and improved outcomes.2
Features of the CONNECTPlus app include:
- Health trackers and scores to monitor pain or symptoms, enabling and informing follow-ups with the individual’s regular GP or specialist;
- Condition specific – and clinically approved - patient information videos, articles and blogs, including frequently asked questions from others with the same condition;
- Medication reminders to support treatment regimes;
- A diary to help with dosage information, plus hospital or GP appointment information and reminders.
Legal & General says the app also brings benefits to Line Managers and HR, helping them understand a condition and its impact on life- and work- ability, so they can better support their employees. This includes making informed reasonable adjustments in line with the Equality Act 2010, where required.
Around 15 million people in England have a long-term condition.3
Consequently, this represents an aspect of workplace support that requires more focus according to the government’s response last year to consultations on proposals to reduce ill-health related job loss.4
Vanessa Sallows, Claims & Governance Director at Legal & General Group Protection: “We’re really excited about the partnership with HCI. After many years of advocating - and evidencing - the benefits to people and business of personalised MDT pathways, we are always looking for ways to enhance those pathways, focusing squarely on taking a holistic and people-centred approach.The addition of the CONNECTPlus app helps us further embed digital health into the customer experience, extending MDT support and enabling a way to support employees – plus their immediate families, HR and Line Managers – in the kinds of daily decisions that impact outcomes.”
Richard Wyatt-Haines, Director at HCI: “Sadly, there are increasing numbers of people living with a long-term condition and nearly one in four of us have two or more conditions. This can be tough for each individual, their families and the people they work with. Thanks to the scale of Legal & General, CONNECTPlus can now make life easier for thousands more people across the country in a really simple way, and on one simple digital platform.”
Registration to the CONNECTPlus app is quick and easy, with the reassurance that the service is confidential, with no personal information shared with the employer or Legal & General.
Helping employees Be Well. Get Better. Be Supported
The CONNECTPlus app supports all aspects of Legal & General Group Protection’s wellbeing framework Be Well, Get Better, Be Supported.
It supports employees to ‘Be well’ alongside existing services such as the Employee Assistance Programme and Care Concierge, along with the Be Well helpline for HR and Line Managers, which provides early intervention advice and support in the moments that matter on Group Income Protection policies.
It also supports employees to ‘Get Better’ as part of fully-funded personalised MDT pathway rehabilitation and care, and, also to ‘Be Supported’, in terms of return to work programmes.
1 CIPD, Working with Long Covid: Research evidence to inform support, Feb 2022 https://www.cipd.co.uk/Images/long-covid-report-feb-22_tcm18-106089.pdf
2 The Patients Association, Self-management [Accessed April 2022] https://www.patients-association.org.uk/self-management
3 The King’s Fund, Long-term conditions and multi-morbidity [Accessed April 2022] https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/projects/time-think-differently/trends-disease-and-disability-long-term-conditions-multi-morbidity
4 Department for Work & Pensions and Department of Health & Social Care, Government response: Health is everyone’s business, 4 Oct 2021 https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/health-is-everyones-business-proposals-to-reduce-ill-health-related-job-loss/outcome/government-response-health-is-everyones-business
Further information
Notes to editors
Established in 1836, Legal & General is one of the UK's leading financial services groups and a major global investor, with £1.2 trillion in total assets under management1 of which 40% is international. We have a unique and highly synergistic business model, which continues to drive strong returns. Legal & General provides powerful asset origination and management capabilities directly to clients, which also underpin our leading retirement and protection solutions. We are a leading international player in Pension Risk Transfer, in UK and US life insurance, and in UK workplace pensions and retirement income. Our purpose is to improve the lives of our customers and create value for our shareholders. Through inclusive capitalism, we are investing in long-term assets, such as real estate and infrastructure, that can help build a better society for the future.
1Data as at 31 December 2023.
Legal & General Retail helps create brighter financial futures for all our customers. The division covers the savings, protection and retirement needs of our c.14 million retail policyholders and workplace members.
In 2023, we had total individual annuity sales of £1,431 million, and issued £299 million of Lifetime Mortgages and Retirement Interest Only Mortgages. Our Workplace pension platform served 5.2 million members, while our Protection businesses gave peace of mind to several million direct, group and US customers, taking in £1,991 million of UK and $1,584 million of US gross written premiums.
HCI delivers digital health solutions for the NHS and other industry partners that enable, educate and empower patients using digital information. They do this using their CONNECTPlus app; the only app that allows patients to manage all their conditions in one place, and their national and personalised Health and Care Video Library platforms. Their multi-condition approach provides quality information and remote monitoring tools across any care pathway, all tailored to specific, local needs, and all in one place. Their highly skilled team of in-house software developers, UX designers, researchers, videographers, project managers and marketing specialists all work together to deliver and support large scale digital projects with clinicians, their patients and transformation leads in over 20 NHS Trusts.