How Wellness and Technology Enhance CDHC
BY RICK PERRYMAN, PRESIDENT, LIFESTRIVE &
ROB THURSTON, PRESIDENT, HR CONSULTING GROUP
More than 70 percent of United States health
care is spent on treating preventable conditions
while insurance premiums go up 20+
percent per year. How long will employers put up with
this? Market forces are making change inevitable and
driving the current “health care revolution.”
The first phase of this revolution was the development
CDHC plans, which let insurers, employers and
employees create better, cheaper ways to deliver care.
This placed control over costs and care directly in the
hands of employees while generating a surge of innovation
that increases productivity, reduces prices,
improves quality and expands choice.
WELLNESS AND SELF-RESPONSIBILITY
Recently, there has been an explosion of interest in
corporate wellness programs raging from onsite health
assessment program and fitness facilities to Web
applications featuring health risk assessments and
disease management programs. Of course, all of this
has been prompted by more than a decade of increased
insurance premiums, borne largely by corporations.
Wellness programs packaged within major medical
plans may miss the mark if they focus on driving the
user to more health care and medical plan use. We
need a tool that helps employees become more selfresponsible
and less dependent on their health plans.
Initiatives to reshape America’s outlook on health
are currently focusing on rewarding accountable
employees and their families for living healthier lives.
For example, the incentive-based preventive solution
promoted by benefit brokers accrue credits when
behavior reduces or prevents illness and injury,
benefiting only the responsible employees and their
dependents.
ENTITLEMENT OR SELF-RESPONSIBILITY?
More than 70 percent of health care expenditures in
the United States are spent on treating easily
preventable conditions. Since 74 percent of all health
insurance coverage in America is provided through
employer-sponsored plans, these entitlement programs
have fostered among employees a lack of personal
responsibility in health maintenance and disease
prevention. One recent study found that roughly 14
percent of the employees at a large company accounted
for approximately 84 percent of all health expenditures.
This begs an examination of entitlement benefits and
their perpetuation of the “fix me in spite of myself”
attitude. It necessitates a new look at industries such as
the voluntary benefits market and programs like Health
Savings Accounts and Flexible Spending Accounts,
where individuals have an incentive to take
responsibility for their diet and lifestyle choices
DOES CORPORATE WELLNESS WORK?
According to the 2005 SHRM Benefits Survey
Report, 62 percent of businesses surveyed offer wellness
programs, resources and information to employees.
Onsite medical care, cafeterias, fitness centers and
other programs may not provide the efficiency and
optimal intervention that a specialized provider offers.
One example of a specialized provider is wellness
portal LifeStrive, which wraps an incentive-based wellness
program around the heath plan. Besides adopting
a liberal pricing model and offering aggregate reporting
to employers, LifeStrive offers Health Coach, which
constantly engages enrollees in personalized online
health risk appraisals and offers interactive health and
fitness calculators, online and telephonic coaching,
recipes and step-by-step plans to reduce health risks.
Perhaps the largest obstacle to implementing a
wellness program is uncertainty about whether or not
it will work. Behaviors that are continually reinforced
are duplicated; teaming employees with a wellness
partner creates continuous reinforcement and brings
results in terms of measurable improvement in health
and, if an HSA is installed, a growing HSA account
balance.
WILL CONSUMERS TAKE A RESPONSIBLE APPROACH TOWARD HEALTH CARE?
According to Blue Cross and Blue Shield, more than
60 percent of Americans have looked up information
that helped make a proper treatment decision. The
majority (94 percent) who have not searched said they
would if they or other family members needed medical
care. Most individuals (70 percent) use the Internet as
their basic research tool, but a significant percent talk
to their medical care provider, as well (60 percent).
WHAT IS THE FUTURE OF CORPORATE WELLNESS?
Corporate wellness is a promising solution to
the current health care crisis. And the foundation of
any wellness initiative must be greater personal
responsibility combined with authentic education and
an action-based, results-oriented wellness program.
Simple, actionable steps and individual relevance is
the approach which will lead the revolution toward a
more self-responsible corporate culture.
To learn more about this topic, please visit
www.hrconsultinggroup.com or call 801-765-4417.
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