Nugent Santé to deliver Mente mental health service

Healthcare insurance specialist Nugent Santé has teamed up with fellow Preston business Mente to expand its mental health offering.

The independent healthcare insurance intermediary is the first UK business to offer access to the digital platform under its own brand, which will enable it to provide businesses across the country with a comprehensive range of healthcare initiatives.

Health and wellbeing is a key strategic feature within Nugent Santé’s portfolio of health insurance products which include health plans, private medical insurance and a range of group insurance products.

Paul Nugent, managing director of Nugent Santé, said: “All employers have both a moral and legal duty of care to their staff and Mente will help them remain compliant whilst ensuring their employees remain healthy.

"The key thing about Mente is not just the education tools, diagnostics and audit trail that offer a layer of protection on mental health and safety, but also the integrated absence management tool that will be rolled out in October 2018.

"This will allow businesses to manage sickness and calculate costs within the platform to see how much physical and mental health is costing the business as well as calculating the ROI on the wellbeing solutions used to tackle the problem."

Paul added: "No one else in the market is delivering this type of risk based solution specifically aimed at mental health and we believe this powerful tool will provide comprehensive data to allow businesses to fully understand the impact and associated costs of illness on their bottom line.”

Through the Mente online platform employees will be provided with resources to help them understand mental health, as well as pathways to gaining support for a whole array of issues including debt management, bereavement and addictions.

All the courses have been developed by a team of professionals from the mental health and compliance sectors and the courses have gained CPD accreditation offering continued personal development on important topical subjects.

One of Mente’s goals is to remove taboos around mental health, so it may be understood, accepted and managed in the same way as physical health, allowing employees to feel confident in discussing the subject openly.

Paul addedL “Mente is unlike the Employee Assistance Programmes (EAPs) which so many businesses buy into and that are hugely under-utilised by employees and most often are too little too late, as the employee is already facing a major problem.

"Mente is about early intervention and empowering employees to take responsibility for their own health, and delivering education, diagnostics and signposting to immediate support. Alongside this, the employer has an audit trail clearly tracking the support they have provided to add a layer of evidence in cases of litigation and the huge increased level of workplace tribunals caused by mismanagement of employee welfare.” Nugent Santé was an early adopter of the platform and has been involved with Mente since taking part in the pilot of the beta product in 2017. Since inception, Mente has raised more than £100,000 from private investors as well as receiving three rounds of funding from the European Regional Directive Fund (ERDF) through working closely with Lancaster University over the past 12 months.