Health without the headache

Gyms want to offer health memberships, but doing so credibly requires more than bolt-on services. David Joerring, founder & CEO of HealthKey, explains how to get it right

As gyms and leisure centres move beyond fitness and into health, operators are discovering an important reality: creating a credible health membership is far more complex than adding a new benefit. What members want is access to a range of healthcare support that feels joined-up, easy to use and clinically robust. In practice, health memberships have often evolved piecemeal. Telehealth GP services have been added as bolt-ons, typically limited in scope and rarely integrated into the wider member journey. Additional services such as blood testing or diagnostics have sometimes followed, generally as separate touchpoints even when bundled into a single premium tier.

The result is fragmentation for members, complexity for operators and rising costs on both sides.

QUALITY BRINGS COMPLEXITY

The challenge is not a lack of ambition, but the reality of healthcare delivery. Quality provision is rarely driven by generalism: the strongest health services tend to be highly specialised, focused deeply on a specific clinical area and delivered by experts.

Creating a meaningful health programme from scratch therefore requires numerous specialist partners, which is where gyms have struggled; navigating governance, safeguarding, clinician oversight and data protection across multiple contracts takes time and expertise that sits well outside the operational comfort zone of most gyms and leisure organisations. Step forward HealthKey.

A BESPOKE HEALTH OFFERING

HealthKey acts as a health partner to gyms and leisure operators, uniting more than 300 preventative health and wellbeing services – from around 100 carefully vetted providers – on one easy-access platform.

Services range from instant GP access – average match time 27 seconds – to in-person physiotherapy, mental health counselling to weight management, blood tests and diagnostics to women’s health, reproductive health, guidance through cancer pathways and far more.

Every partner is assessed to the robust clinical standards you’d expect from a company that’s backed by Aviva and our ecosystem continues to grow, including in response to specific operator requests; we were recently asked for skin cancer checks for a golf membership, for example.

We consult with each operator to create a bespoke health programme, helping them select the best-fit services for their members, and we fully support a phased approach. Start with a few core services. Use our anonymous, aggregated usage data to identify what people value most. Evolve your package over time.

There is absolutely no need to do everything at once – nor, indeed, to make a long-term commitment, with HealthKey contracts starting at just three months.

OWNERSHIP WITHOUT THE BURDEN We’re even flexible enough to create distinct packages within a membership base, whether tied to membership tiers or to reflect specific health needs: different GP referral pathways or post-natal women, for example.

This is enabled by HealthKey’s full and seamless integration with existing gym apps and software systems. From a tile in their gym app, members access a white-labelled health portal which recognises them instantly, no second log-in required. This ensures they are offered only the services selected by their gym – potentially with self-funded access to hundreds more via the discounted HealthKey marketplace, should the operator wish.

And so operators retain full ownership of the member experience and preventative healthcare journey, without any of the burden of procurement, clinical due diligence, data compliance or technical integration.

Operators retain full ownership of the member experience and preventative healthcare journey

A GENUINE PARTNERSHIP

Operators also enjoy unbeatably low rates with HealthKey, negotiated directly with each provider on the platform based on aggregated demand. It means gyms of all shapes and sizes can offer world-class preventative health support at an affordable price – and it comes with no restrictions. Pricing is a fixed, low monthly fee per service, per member: no usage caps, no surge pricing, no unexpected costs. Why? Because we want people to actively use the service, enjoy the resulting health improvements – and associate these with their gym. It’s why we always refer to ourselves as a health partner. We exist to help every gym become a credible, profitable health hub, moving away from a series of disconnected bolt-ons and towards an ecosystem that combines best-in-class providers – clinically vetted, properly integrated and tailored to the specific member base.

As holistic health memberships continue to rise, operators that embrace rather than oversimplify this complexity will deliver the greatest long-term value – for their businesses and their members. HealthKey removes the headache of that complexity.

For more information about HealthKey email [info@healthkey.health](mailto:info@healthkey.health)