ZIMBABWE’S leading Medical Aid firm, Premier Service Medical Aid Company (PSMAS) has opened its state of the art service center at its headquarters which will improve convenience and service delivery to its clients.
By Michael Gwarisa
The service centre which is a one stop shop service facility, offers members a number of services ranging from card replacements, new applications processing, Health and Fitness services, payments among a host of others.
Speaking during the Service Centre Media Tour, PSMAS Managing Director, Mr Tendai Kapamha said the service center was part of their turnaround process to ensure the organization retains its yesteryear’s glory.
“Any turnaround process goes through failure, and when you have failed, someone needs to stabilise you. Once you are stabilised you fix the issues that would be bothering you. We faced challenges in the sense that we had challenges to a point that we couldn’t pay even our own obligations because of other possible government issues in the past.
“Over the past one and half to two years, the main issues we focused on was to fix, putting new policies and ensure that people adhered to them, and obviously initiating the journey to culture change so that we don’t retain the same mindset that would would have carried us to where we are and restructuring the whole organization ensuring that we ventilate it,” he said.
He added that the service center was meant to ensure that every member would not be moved from one floor to other and back so as to cater even for the sick who come seeking health services assistance.
“Most of our members come here when they are not in their best health conditions they are already ill, so they want support to be able to access services. So we then thought of ensuring that they only come to one place and in that place they get all the services that they want.
“You might have noticed that we have wheelchairs on the ground floor, those are meant to cater for some of our members who wouldn’t be in the right state. Even in the elevators, we have voice coded elevators to cater for those who are visually impaired,” he said.
The service centre is equipped with Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) which monitors the premises 24/7 to minimise cases of misconduct, theft, among other ills. Construction of the service centre commenced around June 2016 and was completed in September the same year.
[pullquote]PSMAS Member Service Supervisor, Emma Phiri said the service center is equipped with high technology equipment which makes it easy for members and prospective members to find their way around.[/pullquote]
“The Queuing machine makes it easy for members to just log in as they come through. They can just enter their member details and the machine will take them through the steps as they go. The CCTV also monitors this place from ground floor and throughout the service centre which is in the first floor.”
Meanwhile, PSMAS has also set up a fitness and wellness corner which offers free wellness screening for its members in a bid to fight the rising cases of Non Communicable Diseases (NCDs).
The wellness corner offers free education for lifestyle modification, nutrition, exercise, Stress Management as well as free medical assistance on issues such as blood pressure, blood sugar and cholesterol checks. Free body analyzers and physical checkup services are also available.
The company celebrates its 88th anniversary this year amidst indications that it has one of the biggest membership subscriber base of not less that one million and branch network spread around the country. PSMAS haS 14 branches countrywide and is in the process of finalising its Beitbridge boarder post branch which will be catering for the Beitbridge community and those who might need their services in transit.
