Employee wellness programs help companies deal with rising healthcare costs

July 25, 2011August 23, 2011 J Roberts

One way corporate America is tackling the rise in healthcare costs is by offering an employee wellness program. Many are offering incentives to employees in terms of gifts and rewards for employees who become actively engaged. The benefits are worth the investment as employers are encouraging employees to take an active role in maintaining their health.

KePRO Industry News

Many employers’ healthcare costs are soaring as a result of the high prevalence of chronic diseases. This is cutting into profit margins and making it difficult for companies to expand. In order to address the situation, many businesses are looking to employee wellness programs.

For example, a group of business leaders in Oregon and state health officials recently joined forces to form the initiative Wellness@Work, according to Oregon Business. The project provides companies with an online resource that they can use gauge their employees’ levels of wellness and consider new initiatives to improve well-being.

“We’re hoping businesses will bring together a committee of employees from all departments to make changes to their workplaces,” Dawn Robbins, the state’s worksite wellness coordinator, told the news source.

She added that despite fears over the cost of the initiatives, most businesses see a significant return on their investment in employee wellness. In fact, the Wellness Council of America estimates that most will experience a return of $3 for every $1 invested.

This could help businesses handle the dramatic rise in healthcare costs that are expected to occur this year and beyond.

Donuts, Diabetes and Dialysis — Doing More With Less

December 15, 2010 Doug

This week we’ve chosen to share some extracts from James Calver’s talk in the UK, “Doing More with Less” — improving care and lowering costs. His comments reflect new developments in US health care that address some of the challenges faced both sides of the Atlantic. Too many donuts (and not enough disease prevention) are driving extraordinary current and future costs of care. New inexpensive monitoring tools and regimen adherence help diabetics and new developments in dialysis lower costs and improve patient care and experience. He illustrates with two related debilitating diseases, diabetes and renal failure and, more often than not, the cause, avoidable lifestyle factors.

By James Calver http://allexian.com/home

It is common knowledge that health care costs are increasing at a staggering rate in the US. Today, our health care expenses are nearly $3 trillion annually, 16% of GDP and projected to grow to 25% of GDP in the years ahead. The average family’s care costs $11,500 and this number has doubled in 5 years.

The increase in costs is driven by supply and demand factors. On the supply side, by 2020 we will have 40,000 fewer physicians. Medical technology costs outpace inflation nearly 5:1 and prescription drug spend on hypertension alone is $25 billion, a number that has doubled in ten years. On the demand side, 70% of our diseases are chronic and mostly lifestyle induced — too many donuts. Adding to the expanding waistline of health care expense is an aging population.

Several notable academics have written about the problem and the solution. Professor Clay Christensen from Harvard Business School; the originator of the term ‘disruptive technology’, writes in his new book. “…by transforming care delivery from integrated, centralized delivery points utilizing high cost interventions supported by highly skilled professionals to more disintegrated, de-centralized points leveraging lower cost interventions and supported by lower skilled professionals.” This means simply doing more with less in new, non-traditional ways and locations.

One of these new, non-traditional ways is more preventative care — 72% of chronic disease is preventable. Emergency room costs are some 80-100 times that of a wellness exam. Others include, personalized medicine tailored to the individuals needs and genome. Home care is cheaper and a better patient experience in many cases. New, lower cost treatments like Medco’s diabetic therapy management and education service. Levering inexpensive labor and technology can reduce costs dramatically.

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Scary Trends In Employer Based Health Care

March 11, 2009March 11, 2009 admin

The US economic situation has conspired with ongoing health care cost inflation to increase financial issues that employers face in offering health care benefits to employees. Couple that with uncertainty about how the Obama Administration will handle health care reform and we are not surprised to see some of the trends reported in the Latest Hewitt Associates Report on trends in health care.

• Nearly 20 percent of employers responding to a new survey are planning to stop offering health benefits over the next three to five years, nearly five times as many as the 4 percent that said they were planning an exit strategy last year.

• Most employers plan on reducing both employer health care subsidies (65%) and benefit design offerings (49%).

• Many employers are planning to increase the prevalence of consumer-driven health care plans (40%) and wellness programs (33%).

Source: Challenges for Health Care in Uncertain Times, 2009: Hewitt’s 10th Annual Health Care Report. www.hewittassociates.com.

At Medical Cost Advocate we recommend that consumers take a more active role in locating and using consumer driven health care services so they can better adapt to the changes that are coming and better manage health care liabilities they may unexpectedly be saddled with.