the hikes will be unsustainable. Chris Boyce,
president and CEO of Virgin HealthMiles,
a Framingham, MA-based provider of
incentivized wellness programs, and a unit
of Richard Branson’s Virgin Group, says
many human resource managers have told
him health care costs could soon exceed
the cost of wages in their organizations.
“HR managers have got to get costs down,”
Boyce urges.
For the 4,233 working Americans surveyed
in Aflac’s report, rising health care costs were
right behind stagnant wages and job security
in giving them insomnia. Behind this number
is the potential disengagement of droves of
distressed employees as they turn their attention toward financial survival instead of
focusing on work.
“Surely the economic climate has turned
up the heat, and employers have taken to
solving this challenge,” says Dr. Craig Keyes,
chief medical officer and executive vice president of Atlanta-based Alere Health, which
manages health and wellness programs for
many Fortune 500 firms. Jeff Slay, founder
and CEO of Neovia Integrated Insurance
Services, a group health plan broker based in
Pasadena, CA, which has added wellness services, notes that through positive impact on
insurance premiums, a well-executed health
program can counteract medical inflation
(which he says is averaging 10 percent) by
three to four percentage points.
Health and wellness experts say the past
litany of wellness programs that employers
introduced while on the learning curve to
tackle problems ranging from smoking and
obesity to chronic diseases such as hypertension, diabetes, and cancer yielded mixed
results because of the general absence of both
incentives and proper measurement. With
businesses still running on lean staffs in an
uncertain economy, that lack of efficacy could
become a critical condition.
Employers with unhealthy or at-risk work-
forces incur not just medical costs but also
equal or greater productivity losses, Keyes
points out. Says Keyes, “We don’t have to talk
about people going to the hospital. A person
develops pneumonia and is out for a week.
When you look at it, insurance costs are just
the first piece of the overall picture.”
“There’s been a very noticeable shift to
viewing employee wellness as a strategic
business decision,” points out Tom Cicotti,
senior vice president of Chicago-based CHC
Wellness, adding that the root of insurance
hikes lies in medical claims for preventable
conditions. Whereas many companies gauged
just program participation rates in the past,
Cicotti notes that many now are seeking
“retrospective analyses,” such as comparing
the volume and types of insurance claims
before and after the implementation of their
wellness programs. “Those separating from
the pack are quantifying the true dollar
impact of their programs,” he says.
Healthy employees
have their rewards
Call us at 1.800.654.7824 or
visit Blueprintfor Wellness.com/rewards
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