A workplace wellness program did not significantly lower healthcare costs or improve outcomes in its first year, according to new findings published at the National Bureau of Economic Research.
For the study, researchers implemented a workplace wellness program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The program included an onsite biometric health screening, an online health risk assessment and other wellness activities. A group of 3,300 university employees received access to the program with various incentives, while a control group of 1,534 study participants did not.
The study found 56 percent of employees with access to the program completed the initial part of the research that included an on-campus health screening.
The study also found program participants reported healthier behaviors and spent $1,574 fewer on medical expenses compared to the control group. However, researchers concluded many of the study findings were overall statistically insignificant.
"Although we fail to find effects of our workplace wellness program on the majority of the outcomes in our analysis, we emphasize that we have only examined outcomes in the first year following randomization," the study authors conclude. "It is possible that meaningful effects may emerge in later years. As a part of the Illinois Workplace Wellness Study, we will continue to collect data so that we can estimate long-run effects in future research."
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