 |
 |
At 16.3 percent of the gross domestic product, health care is taking one of the biggest bites out of the U.S. economy. And if cost increases hold steady, the U.S. government predicts health care will represent nearly 20 percent of GDP in just 10 years. But the nation’s largest purchasers of private health care coverage aren’t waiting for the storm surge to hit. They are embracing a 21st century approach to health benefit design that promotes prevention along with health and productivity management. It’s an approach that takes into account a new global economy, better integration through improved technology, and the potential to enhance care by offering services where employees spend the most time—at the workplace. One of the realities of today’s economy is the growth of the U.S.-based, multinational operation. Information technology and emerging economies across the world are supplying corporations with the ability to employ valuable manpower in real time, on the other side of the world. We see the global economy affecting health benefits in two different ways: first, it is making it more important than ever that employers find the most efficient, most effective health care delivered at the lowest price so that shrinking profits are not swallowed up by domestic health care cost increases. Secondly, employers need to find ways to export these effective health management programs so they can improve the health and productivity of employees working overseas. This rings especially true in emerging countries where socialized medicine translates into limited access to preventive health services and treatment delays. We believe corporations who treat their offshore workforce as valued assets through population health management will attract the best and the brightest skilled workers in the world. To provide our clients with the tools to implement a population health management program, we will release our first health risk assessments (HRAs) for the global market this summer. And by the end of the year, these essential questionnaires that help determine individual health risk will be translated and culturally adapted in 11 different languages. Read more about how HealthFitness is building on our proven 21st Century Benefit Design strategies to enhance employee health through population health management by downloading our latest issue brief, Just what the doctor ordered: A vision for population-based employee health, at http://www.hfit.com/briefs.cfm. We look forward to continuing our partnership with you to turn the vision for your company’s health—both domestically and abroad—into reality. Yours in good health,
Gregg Lehman Inside HealthFitness Bess Marcus, Ph.D., is one of the experts on our Science Advisory Board and brings extensive experience in behavior change. Marcus is a professor of community health, psychiatry and human behavior at Brown University and director of the Centers for Behavioral and Preventive Medicine at Miriam Hospital. She also is a clinical health psychologist with primary research interests in the prevention of cardiovascular disease and the promotion of women’s health. She has spent the last 20 years conducting research primarily on physical activity behavior and has published more than 150 papers and book chapters on this topic as well as three books. She has also developed low-cost interventions to promote physical activity behavior in community, workplace and primary care settings. Marcus has participated in numerous national and international committees and review groups including the American Heart Association, American College of Sports Medicine, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and National Institutes of Health. She currently serves on the national advisory panel for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention course on Physical Activity and Public Health. Additionally, she is principal investigator or co-investigator on 13 National Institutes of Health grants on physical activity behavior. Visit http://www.hfit.com/sboard.asp to learn more about members of our Science Advisory Board. Industry Insights As health care costs continue to climb, many employers seek to adopt an integrated approach to managing health programs, aligning functions such as workers’ compensation, health benefits, employee assistance programs and long-term disability. By integrating data from these programs, employers are better able to obtain a complete picture of what the company is spending on health care—and the return it’s receiving on its investment. HealthFitness is a member of DMAA: The Care Continuum Alliance, a consortium of more than 200 corporate and individual stakeholders, and is working to establish best practice guidelines for disease management when it’s integrated with lifestyle management programs. “Organizations such as the National Committee for Quality Assurance and URAC are looking to extend their quality certifications into the wellness industry as well as disease management,” Earl Thompson, program outcomes director at HealthFitness, said. “With these new certifications, we expect health improvement companies will be held to established standards to demonstrate ROI,” which will allow clients to better compare providers. Thompson is a member of the DMAA’s Wellness Workgroup that will make recommendations on the most appropriate design and method for a vendor to use to report to a client the results of a specific wellness program delivered to that client’s employees. “We are represented in this process to help develop standards around wellness so we ensure that what HealthFitness does is compliant with industry standards,” Thompson explained. DMAA promotes the role of population health improvement in raising the quality of care, improving health outcomes and reducing preventable health care costs for individuals with chronic conditions and those at risk of developing chronic conditions. DMAA’s Wellness Workgroup is expected to deliver recommendations by the winter of 2008. These recommendations will be published in the Outcomes Guidelines Report, volume III. For more information about DMAA, visit www.dmaa.org. Report Identifies Drivers of Superior Financial Results, Productivity Improvements The report found companies with the most effective health and productivity programs have superior financial returns and productivity improvements. Best practices for effective health and productivity programs included: employee engagement (incentives, organizational alignment and communication), programs (design, delivery and systems technology) and measurement (processes, risk reduction, financial and quality). Other key findings included: • Lifestyle risks, physical conditions and chronic conditions top the list of preventable health issues affecting business performance. • Organizations with the most effective health and productivity programs emphasize primary prevention by regularly measuring health improvement outcomes, behavioral change and the impact on risk reduction. What Employers Should Know about Obesity According to the report: • Obesity is associated with a 36 percent increase in spending on health care services and a 77 percent increase in medication spending—more than smoking and problem drinking. • Looking only at medical expenditures and increased absenteeism, it’s estimated that obesity alone costs a firm with 1,000 employees an extra $395,000 per year. As low-cost first steps to support a healthy weight culture, the Conference Board report suggests ideas such as providing only healthy foods at catered meetings, charging more for unhealthy foods in the company cafeteria, and requiring vendors to include bottled water in soda machines. Best-in-Class Practices and Awards Through health coaching, employees are empowered to develop a personalized health improvement program to achieve their goals. And empowerment drives engagement, improving employee success in reducing health risks and resulting in lower cost treatment options. For employees at the Pittsburgh office of Bayer, a global enterprise with core competencies in the fields of health care, nutrition and high-tech materials, HealthFitness’ EMPOWERED™ Health Coaching is playing a key role in delivering healthy behavior changes among employees. “With time and help, I’ve lost 20 pounds and I feel great. I cut down on unhealthy fat in my diet and I’ve learned to read labels. I see my success in this program as a life-changing necessity and not just another boring diet that never works,” EMPOWERED participant, Barbara Smith, distribution representative, said. “I know I made the right decision to participate in this program. I am confident that I can continue to achieve success because this program has changed my life.” To effectively engage participants, EMPOWERED provides employees with the freedom of choice to determine how they receive a lifestyle intervention: face-to-face, telephonic, Web-based or a combination of these methods. Our health coaching program also focuses on employee readiness versus risk factor alone, requiring employees to ‘own the change’ as opposed to our staff simply telling the employee what to do. And in the dynamics of partnership with our clients to improve employee health, we base our compensation with EMPOWERED on employee participation. If the employee stops participating, our client stops paying. To learn more about the unique approach behind HealthFitness’ EMPOWERED Health Coaching, visit http://www.hfit.com/healthcoaching.asp Let HealthFitness Help Put Your Program in the Spotlight The Health Project, a private-public organization formed to generate attitudinal and behavioral changes in the American health care system, sponsors the awards. The Health Project seeks programs that improve health by reducing health risks, reduce medical care costs, and can definitively document effectiveness at these goals. Program categories (programs may be in more than one) include chronic disease, high risk, innovator/vendor, insurance, integrated systems of care, Web-enabled, productivity enhancing and worksite-based. Visit http://healthproject.stanford.edu/ for additional information or talk with your program manager. The deadline for applications is May 30. News from the Wire |
|
|
