“Employers should expect healthcare costs to increase by 9 percent in 2010”
June 18, 2009 by Molly Merrill
(Source: Health Care Finance News)
“Corporate Employee Wellness Programs Gaining Popularity”
June 22, 2009
by Laura Petrecca
The data is in - health care costs are expected to increase 9% in 2010. Smart employers are looking for effective employee wellness programs that will limit this increase over time.
Here is a link to the Reuters article: http://us.mobile.reuters.com/m/FullArticle/p.rdt/CHLT/nhealthNews_uUSTRE55H5BR20090618
When it comes to employee wellness, it takes more than an email reminder to make a lasting impact on healthy habits. However, when combined with a personal wellness coach who can help walk you through the process, the addition of electronic reminders can be a beneficial supplement, as this article from Time magazine demonstrates:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1902832,00.html#
Thanks to Carissa for these latest updates…
A HEALTHY DIET TO STAVE OFF CANCER
The Wooster Daily Record, Wooster, OH
June 10, 2009
Bobbie Randall
BATTLE CONTINUES OVER SCHOOL NUTRITION STANDARDS IN IOWA
Radio Iowa News
June 9, 2009
O. Kay Henderson
June 10, 2009
Times of India, India
June 10, 2009
The Kingston Whig Standard, Ontario, Canada
Michael Woods
A DAD’S EXPERIMENT: AVOIDING THE FAMILY CURSE OF OBESITY
June 10, 2009
The Wall Street Journal
Kurt Novak
June 10, 2009
The Bangor Daily News, Bangor, Maine
Rick Woychik
GRANT TO HELP PREVENT DIABETES ON BOIS FORTE RESERVATION
June 9, 2009
Duluth News Tribune, MN
WASHINGTON — In its effort to overhaul health care, Congress is planning to give employers sweeping new authority to reward employees for healthy behavior, including better diet, more exercise, weight loss and smoking cessation.
To read the full article from the NY Times, see this link: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/10/health/policy/10health.html?_r=1
Thanks to Michele Baker for the following updates…
Unemployment May Be Hazardous to Your Health
May 8, 2009
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/09/health/09sick.html?ref=health
Congress Plans Incentives for Healthy Habits
May 9, 2009
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/10/health/policy/10health.html?_r=1&ref=health
Lawmakers Consider Rewarding Employees for Healthy Behavior
May 11, 2009
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
http://www.rwjf.org/publichealth/digest.jsp?id=10652
Colorado Trust donates $4.5M to child health services
May 12, 2009
Denver Business Journal
http://denver.bizjournals.com/denver/stories/2009/05/11/daily30.html
Massachusetts set to unveil fast-food menu rules
May 13, 2009
Reuters
http://www.reuters.com/article/healthNews/idUSTRE54C03E20090513
Findings Of 22-Year Study: Adults Aren’t Active Enough
May 13, 2009
Medical News Today
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/149882.php
UNC Asheville Receives Grant for Childhood Obesity, Wellness Programs
May 13, 2009
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
http://www.rwjf.org/publichealth/digest.jsp?id=10697
Obama says House looks to back healthcare in July
May 14, 2009
Reuters
http://www.reuters.com/article/healthNews/idUSTRE54A01P20090514
Shaping up Chicago: from City Hall to Montrose Harbor
May 14, 2009
Medill Reports: Chicago
http://news.medill.northwestern.edu/chicago/news.aspx?id=129797
That’s the recommendation from wellness guru Dee Edington in the following article…
Janice Simmons, for HealthLeaders Media, April 16, 2009
In today’s economy, it’s becoming apparent that what we consider “health” needs to be redefined, argues Dee Edington, PhD, director of the University of Michigan’s Health Management Research Center in Ann Arbor.
In quality terms, the current healthcare model needs to move away from its structure of waiting for defects—and then trying to fix those defects. In other words, the system waits for patients to get sick and then treats them. But this has created a failed healthcare strategy that is posing a major threat to business survival, says Edington, author of a new book, Zero Trends: Health as a Serious Economic Strategy.
“Companies are going out of business because we don’t pay attention to healthy people. Our whole country, as we all know, just waits for sickness,” he told a Washington audience earlier this month. “Nobody cares about health except for the individuals themselves, and they don’t even care because they think, ‘It’s not going to happen to me.’”
Edington doesn’t consider his comments a shot across the bow aimed at healthcare providers. Instead, he sees it as an idea that providers—as employers themselves—can embrace and adopt for their own employee populations. One Michigan healthcare organization, Allegiance Health System, has already taken his suggestions on keeping its employees on the healthier side.
To change the conversation about health in today’s environment, Edington proposes five areas of change:
1. Move from health as the absence of disease to health as vitality and energy. Companies can no longer wait for their employees to become sick. Instead, they need to realize that keeping people healthy adds value on both sides: Costs related to disease are lower while productivity increases.
2. Move from caring only for the sick to enabling people to stay healthy. A culture needs to be developed that individuals are “winners” when it comes to health. Some corporate and community cultures are starting to change, and governments have put their stamp on change by legislating smoke-free environments or mandating safety belt laws. But more is needed, Edington says. Employers can help by recognizing and rewarding employees for staying healthy. “Set the incentives for healthy choices. Reinforce every touch point, every e-mail. Every time CEOs have a chance to talk, let them talk about the healthy culture,” he says.
3. Move from the cost of healthcare to the total value of health. Governments and organizations generally have focused on how much it costs for someone who is sick. However, the total value of someone’s health should be much more than that, he says.
4. Move from individual participation to population engagement. Health promotion or wellness programs have gone down the wrong path, Edington says. “If you try to change a person or provide something where people can change, then where do they go?” he asks. “You can’t put a changed person back into the same environment because what happens? They go right back.” Instead, shifts need to be made that keep entire populations in mind. Whether it’s a company or a government, strategies aimed at entire populations need to be kept in mind that encourage, for instance, compliance with activities such as exercising or smoking cessation.
5. Move from behavior change to a culture of health. All too often, a “blame the victim” mentality has emerged for those who drink too much or do not exercise enough or do not eat healthy foods. The solution was to “sentence” them to behavior change programs, which often fell short of their goals, he says. Instead, more encompassing changes need to take place across the culture through vision and commitment that encourage healthier behaviors.
Modern Healthcare highlighted the following in a recent article:
Despite recession, workplace wellness programs continue to grow
Posted: April 15, 2009 - 4:45 pm EDT
Employers are continuing to add workplace wellness programs despite the ongoing recession, according to a survey by Watson Wyatt Worldwide, a consulting firm, and the National Business Group on Health.
Nearly 58% of companies surveyed offer lifestyle improvement programs, up from 43% in 2007, and 56% offer health coaches, compared with 42% two years ago, according to the survey of 489 large U.S. employers conducted in January.
Here’s a link to the article: http://www.modernhealthcare.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090415/REG/304159975/1010&rssfeed=rss01
ELK GROVE VILLAGE, Ill., April 13 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — Poor health among workers is far costlier to U.S. employers than they realize, impacting their profitability and undercutting the nation’s overall productivity, according to a major study published this week in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine (JOEM).
The multi-year study of ten organizations employing more than 150,000 workers indicates that employers who focus only on medical and pharmacy costs in creating employee health strategies may misidentify the health conditions that most impact the productivity of their employees — while underestimating the impact of other factors.
One such factor, “presenteeism,” occurs when employees with health conditions are present at their jobs but are unable to perform at full capacity. The study closely examined the effects of presenteeism, concluding that impaired employee-performance typically creates a greater drain on a company’s productivity than employee absence — a finding which could come as a surprise to some employers.
The study also found that when considering medical and drug costs alone, the top five conditions driving costs are cancer (other than skin cancer), back/neck pain, coronary heart disease, chronic pain, and high cholesterol. But when health-related productivity costs are measured along with medical and pharmacy costs, the top five chronic health conditions driving these overall health costs shift significantly, to depression, obesity, arthritis, back/neck pain and anxiety.
The study suggests that many employers miss an opportunity to improve productivity and their bottom-line results by failing to recognize and prioritize these health conditions when they develop integrated employee- health strategies and related interventions.
The study, coordinated by the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine (ACOEM), the Integrated Benefits Institute (IBI), and Alere LLC (formerly Matria Healthcare, Inc.) is one of the largest of its kind to date. Research was conducted via the Alere Center for Health Intelligence and funding was provided by the National Pharmaceutical Council.
“The wake-up call for U.S. employers is that simply looking at the costs of specific medical conditions by adding up medical and pharmacy claims costs alone won’t give a true picture of the full impact of poor health on the much greater costs of lost productivity in the workforce,” said Ronald Loeppke, MD, MPH, executive vice president of Health and Productivity Strategy for Alere(R) and one of the study’s lead researchers. In addition to his role at Alere(R), Dr. Loeppke serves on the board of directors of both IBI and ACOEM.
“Employers need to move beyond solutions that focus only on specific medical conditions and toward the development of integrated personal health support strategies that deal with multiple health conditions and health risks by focusing on the whole person as well as the whole population,” said Thomas Parry, PhD, president of the Integrated Benefits Institute. “This is especially important if American business is to remain competitive in the midst of a dire global economy.”
Other highlights of the study:
– Health-related productivity costs are significantly greater than medical and pharmacy costs alone. On average, every $1 of medical and pharmacy costs is matched to $2.3 of health-related productivity costs — and that figure is much greater for some conditions.
– Co-morbidities — employees with multiple chronic health conditions — drive the largest effects on productivity loss. The study calls for further research to better evaluate the impacts of co-morbidities by conditions and combinations of conditions.
– The impact of poor health on productivity impacts all levels of an enterprise. Executives/managers seem to suffer high presenteeism productivity- loss related to specific health conditions along with those in non-managerial jobs.
Researchers analyzed more than 1.1 million medical and pharmacy claims during the study. The ten corporations that participated ranged from an industrial chemical manufacturer and a computer hardware manufacturer to telecommunications and technology companies.
To fully gauge health-related productivity costs, researchers measured medical and pharmacy spending along with lost-productivity costs related to absence and presenteeism. The study notes that employers have not historically assessed costs in this way, limiting themselves instead to a “siloed” approach that seeks to manage single health-cost categories, such as medical visits or pharmaceuticals, through benefit-package design.
Researchers compared pharmacy and medical claims data to employee self- reported absence, presenteeism and health information collected through the Health and Work Performance Questionnaire (HPQ), developed by Harvard University researcher Ronald Kessler, PhD, and the World Health Organization. Information collected on employer business measures was combined with this database in modeling health-related lost productivity.
The analysis employed by the research team breaks down the silos typically used when examining the cost of health care for a company. “When medical costs are viewed in a silo, or without the broader context of the full health- related costs, the full impact of a given health condition may be seriously underestimated without accurately assessing the accompanying costs of lost productivity,” Dr. Loeppke said.
“A healthy workforce is critical to an employer’s ability to compete in today’s economy,” said Dan Leonard, president of the National Pharmaceutical Council. “This landmark study can help employers understand the importance of balancing health care costs with quality of care and wellness and prevention initiatives when designing benefits. By recognizing these issues, employers can take steps toward improving employee health, productivity, and retention, as well as spend their health care dollars more effectively.”
“The transformational opportunity for employers is to look beyond healthcare benefits as a cost to be managed and rather to the benefits of good health as an investment to be leveraged. Ultimately, a healthier, more productive workforce can help drive a healthier economy for our nation,” Dr. Loeppke said.
Study authors include Ronald Loeppke, MD, MPH; Michael Taitel, PhD.; Vince Haufle, MPH; Thomas Parry, PhD.; Ronald C. Kessler, PhD.; and Kimberly Jinnett, PhD.
Thanks to Mark Onigman for this article. Full website link available at http://cft8.blogspot.com/2009/04/most-employers-underestimate-full-costs.html
This week we’re preparing the group for some longer events many have upcoming (half marathon or more in many cases)…