Hospitals across the country are trying to survive the back end of a recession, navigate through the uncertainty of healthcare reform and fight the increase of employee medical costs, all while trying to maximize profits.
One way hospitals have begun to decrease medical costs is through employee wellness programs that focus on chronic disease prevention. Preventable chronic diseases make up three quarters of all healthcare spending and are the leading cause of disability. Leading executives finally realized what was sitting under their noses for years; placing a focus on wellness as a serious cost containment strategy is no longer a luxury, but a necessity.
While many hospitals offer wellness programs, many of these programs do not employee accepted best practices for lowering costs and preventing disease.
Five best practices that all wellness programs should include follow.
1. Utilize real wellness consultants. Keeping up on the ever-evolving landscape of health and wellness is difficult work. Many organization’s programs fail because they are one of the many projects assigned to an HR representative. Wellness companies exist to take the planning, administration and execution of your wellness plan off of participating companies' shoulders. \ Outsourcing the operations and expertise of a wellness program to an organization dedicated to wellness is a cost-effective alternative to hiring your own wellness team.
Other expectations of a wellness expert are:
• Apply the latest research-based programs to drive results
• Identify strengths and weaknesses of an existing program or cultural readiness
• Provide the "roadmap" from goal setting and planning to evaluation
• Optimize message to convey goals
• Integrate client specific data to evaluate and adjust your program as needed to provide measurable results
• Provide easy access and turnkey implementation to a complex problem
2. Focus on "low-hanging fruit" first. For years, companies have attempted to identify the most costly of their employees and teach them to control their costs. Over the last 10 years, medical costs have increased 117 percent and employee contributions have increased 147 percent. So, it is apparent that this focus isn’t working. Employers need to identify the 80-90 percent of their population that are healthy and make sure they keep them healthy. It is likely that the most costly employees on the plan will never be low risk. If neglected, you can be sure there are low-risk employees that will become costly though. Programs focused on walking, weight management (maintenance or lowering) and healthy eating can impact almost everyone.
3. Identify the risks that actually affect your cost. The number one intervention program asked about by employers is smoking cessation. In a sample of more than 20,000 participants in the CHC Wellness database, the future estimated medical cost attributed to a condition was three times higher for stress (10.31 percent) than it was for smoking (3.36 percent). Additionally, metabolic syndrome in the sample population outpaced the number of smokers by 40 percent. Companies can expect their employees with metabolic syndrome to cost their plan 4-10 times that of those without the condition. Without a comprehensive analysis of their biometric, psychological and behavioral risk, companies have no way of targeting the condition that have the highest impact on their specific cost structure.
4. Know your numbers. Only 18 percent of employees see their physician annually to learn their critical biometric readings, such as cholesterol, glucose, liver function and blood counts. Companies implement wellness programs hoping to provide a convenient solution for everyone to know their numbers. Companies must insist that any partner collecting the data for their employees will provide them with an anonymous report of the global health issues their group faces.
In addition to biometric testing, companies following best practices provide:
• Health risk assessments
• Incentive tracking
• Health education and coaching
• Immunizations
• Health challenges
5. Provide financial incentives. Without an incentive, only 25 percent of employees will participate in a voluntary wellness program. By utilizing the correct incentives, this number can rise to over 90 percent. The correct implementation of an incentive structure can also provide a way to make employing a wellness initiative a no-lose proposition. Contribution structuring allows many companies to make their program budget neutral or even budget positive. The latter will also create a budget to implement other wellness components such as health coaching or an incentive optimization platform.
Joe Miller is Managing Director for CHC Wellness, a national firm dedicated to providing on-site corporate and community health and wellness programs.
One way hospitals have begun to decrease medical costs is through employee wellness programs that focus on chronic disease prevention. Preventable chronic diseases make up three quarters of all healthcare spending and are the leading cause of disability. Leading executives finally realized what was sitting under their noses for years; placing a focus on wellness as a serious cost containment strategy is no longer a luxury, but a necessity.
While many hospitals offer wellness programs, many of these programs do not employee accepted best practices for lowering costs and preventing disease.
Five best practices that all wellness programs should include follow.
1. Utilize real wellness consultants. Keeping up on the ever-evolving landscape of health and wellness is difficult work. Many organization’s programs fail because they are one of the many projects assigned to an HR representative. Wellness companies exist to take the planning, administration and execution of your wellness plan off of participating companies' shoulders. \ Outsourcing the operations and expertise of a wellness program to an organization dedicated to wellness is a cost-effective alternative to hiring your own wellness team.
Other expectations of a wellness expert are:
• Apply the latest research-based programs to drive results
• Identify strengths and weaknesses of an existing program or cultural readiness
• Provide the "roadmap" from goal setting and planning to evaluation
• Optimize message to convey goals
• Integrate client specific data to evaluate and adjust your program as needed to provide measurable results
• Provide easy access and turnkey implementation to a complex problem
2. Focus on "low-hanging fruit" first. For years, companies have attempted to identify the most costly of their employees and teach them to control their costs. Over the last 10 years, medical costs have increased 117 percent and employee contributions have increased 147 percent. So, it is apparent that this focus isn’t working. Employers need to identify the 80-90 percent of their population that are healthy and make sure they keep them healthy. It is likely that the most costly employees on the plan will never be low risk. If neglected, you can be sure there are low-risk employees that will become costly though. Programs focused on walking, weight management (maintenance or lowering) and healthy eating can impact almost everyone.
3. Identify the risks that actually affect your cost. The number one intervention program asked about by employers is smoking cessation. In a sample of more than 20,000 participants in the CHC Wellness database, the future estimated medical cost attributed to a condition was three times higher for stress (10.31 percent) than it was for smoking (3.36 percent). Additionally, metabolic syndrome in the sample population outpaced the number of smokers by 40 percent. Companies can expect their employees with metabolic syndrome to cost their plan 4-10 times that of those without the condition. Without a comprehensive analysis of their biometric, psychological and behavioral risk, companies have no way of targeting the condition that have the highest impact on their specific cost structure.
4. Know your numbers. Only 18 percent of employees see their physician annually to learn their critical biometric readings, such as cholesterol, glucose, liver function and blood counts. Companies implement wellness programs hoping to provide a convenient solution for everyone to know their numbers. Companies must insist that any partner collecting the data for their employees will provide them with an anonymous report of the global health issues their group faces.
In addition to biometric testing, companies following best practices provide:
• Health risk assessments
• Incentive tracking
• Health education and coaching
• Immunizations
• Health challenges
5. Provide financial incentives. Without an incentive, only 25 percent of employees will participate in a voluntary wellness program. By utilizing the correct incentives, this number can rise to over 90 percent. The correct implementation of an incentive structure can also provide a way to make employing a wellness initiative a no-lose proposition. Contribution structuring allows many companies to make their program budget neutral or even budget positive. The latter will also create a budget to implement other wellness components such as health coaching or an incentive optimization platform.
Joe Miller is Managing Director for CHC Wellness, a national firm dedicated to providing on-site corporate and community health and wellness programs.