How often has it happened that you were in a hurry and quickly needed to check your medical aid benefits?
All you have to do is send GEMS an SMS in the prescribed format (see below) and within seconds you will get a reply SMS confirming the benefit available - another initiative by GEMS to bring healthcare within your reach!
This is how it works:
You need to send the following information exactly as explained below to 33489:
Important: Please make sure that you include a comma after each item in your SMS, as shown in the example below. If you don't, your request will not be successful.
Step 1: Type Benefit
Step 2: Type your GEMS membership number
Step 3: Choose the benefit you want to check from the table below (remember you can only check one benefit category per SMS).
Step 4: Sapphire and Beryl members:Type the SMS short code for the benefit you want to check according to this table:
| SMS short code | Benefit Description |
| Overall limit | Annual overall limit |
| Acute | Acute medication and over the counter medication |
| Ambulance | Emergency medical assistance |
| Appliance | Appliances (medical and surgical) |
| Allied | Allied health services |
| Blood | Blood transfusion services |
| Chronic | Chronic medication |
| PMB | Prescribed minimum benefits |
| Dental | Dentistry (basic and specialised) |
| GP | General Practitioners (out of hospital) |
| Prosthesis | Internal and external prosthesis |
| Mental | Mental health |
| Advanced radiology | Advanced radiology (MRI, CT scans, etc.) |
| Basic radiology | Basic radiology |
| Specialist | Medical specialist |
| Optical | Optical (frames, lenses, etc.) |
| Oncology | Oncology (chemotherapy and radiotherapy) |
| SMS short code | Benefit description |
| Save | Savings/PMSA |
| Day | Day-to-day benefit |
| Acute | Acute medication |
| Chronic | Chronic medication |
| Allied | Allied health services |
| Basic | Basic dentistry |
| Special | Specialised dentistry |
| Optical | Optical benefit |
| Hospital | Hospital |
| PMB | Prescribed Minimum Benefits |
Step 5: Type your dependant code (00 if you are a principal member). You can find this on the back of your membership card under "Name".
Step 6: Press send on your cell phone.
Step 7: Wait for the reply from GEMS.
Example
If you want to find out how much benefit you have for day-to-day medical expenses and you are the main member, the SMS that you will send to GEMS will look like this:
Benefit, 1234567, Day, 00
If your message was not successful, you will receive a reply from GEMS explaining why. You can then correct the error and send a new SMS.
How you need to interpret a positive response:
You will receive an SMS containing the following text:
M001234567 as at 01/02/09 12:30, 00,
Day; R1000 Fam R3300; NB Subject to Scheme rules.
Let's take a look at what each piece of information in this example means:
Each SMS costs R1.50.
Should you have any queries please contact the GEMS call centre on 0860 00 4367.