CallSource^® Aim Higher

Should You Be Involved With Corporate Wellness?

by David E. Wade, DC, CCSP, CCST, CHC, May 7 2010

Employers everywhere struggle to address the increasing cost of health insurance and workers’ compensation.  Whether you are fully insured or self-insured, the issue is the same – risk drives cost.  Unfortunately, most fail to implement strategies to avoid claims to begin with.

The cost of healthcare for businesses threatens the nation’s ability to compete in the global marketplace.  The escalating cost of health has taken a toll on private and public sectors and is projected to continue to spiral.  Healthcare spending in these sectors doubled from 1990-2001, and if the trend continues, the entire gross national product will be spent on healthcare.

Is it your moral responsibility to do something about the problem?  Worksites are becoming a prime venue for promoting healthy habits, and employers who improve employee wellness can reap the rewards of fewer sick days, greater overall productivity, and lower health insurance costs.

You should take a lead role in corporate wellness. Employers need your assistance to participate in their wellness and preventative programs to help improve the health of their employees and dependents.

So what tools, programs, strategies, sales and marketing is needed to cash in on the most significant growth opportunity for healthcare providers over the next decade – wellness and prevention.

What is wellness?
Wellness has become such a broad term it could mean nutritional intervention, stress management, body wraps, immunizations, or lifetime chiropractic care – depending on whom you talk to.

In this article, wellness means practicing all the things that keep a person well.  It involves activities such as maintaining proper nutrition, exercising, controlling stress, as well as having good personal, family, and social relationships.

Most importantly, wellness relies on practicing behaviors that prevent illness and disease.  Many Americans are realizing that preventing an illness makes more sense than treating it once it has already occurred.

More than 95 percent of healthcare spending in the United States goes toward diagnosing and treating existing illnesses, yet we know that 70 percent to 80 percent of these costs are from lifestyle risks that can be prevented.  That’s why there has never been a better time for wellness.

As healthcare costs continue to be a concern for employers, wellness programs offer a proactive way to help employees and their families maintain and improve their health.

Proposed tax breaks
A bill pending in Congress will provide tax credits to companies who offer qualified company wellness programs.  The bill would give companies a tax credit of $200 each for the first 200 employees participating in a qualified company wellness program, and $100 each for each additional participant.

This legislation is attempting to encourage companies to be proactive and address health risks that lead to the spiraling high cost of healthcare that businesses are facing today.  Research shows that a qualified wellness program can save a company money.

For example: Being overweight costs the nation more than $117 billion dollars annually according to a report released by the American College of Sports Medicine.  Inactivity adds another $76 billion of preventable healthcare cost yearly.

A wellness program needs to be properly planned to be effective.  The proposed legislation requires a program to have the following elements to qualify for tax breaks:

• Provide health screenings and assess health risks.  The assessment is to identify harmful behavioral and lifestyle risk factors.  Your program should offer a health risk assessment (HRA) including clinically obtained biometric data for enhanced validity and personal health screens including cholesterol testing, PSA, bone density, and more.
• Provide health events to raise awareness.  Intervention is started once the risk factors are identified through the HRA.  Your program should offer a variety of options to fit each participant’s preferences and needs to be designed around the employee risks.
• Provide seminars or educational programs. This will assist people in behavioral changes, such as losing weight, stopping smoking, reducing spinal stress from repetitious movements, getting fit, and lowering blood pressure and cholesterol levels.

Include a health risk review to evaluate the HRA with each participating employee. Offer one-on-one wellness coaching to assist in addressing risk factors, and perhaps make life coaching available. Invite health challenges to get everyone motivated, and provide Web-based tools for additional wellness information including customized nutritional and exercise programs.

• Appoint a wellness committee. They will be responsible for overseeing the organization’s wellness program to be sure it is run effectively.  The wellness committee can change the wellness culture of the company with educational resources to assist individuals in selecting a healthier lifestyle, including a monthly health and wellness newsletter, on-site presentations, healthy campaigns, and health fairs all based on risks identified.

This legislation, if passed, could substantially help the chiropractic corporate wellness and prevention industry to become a valuable and integrated part of healthcare benefits in most American companies. It could also significantly help improve the health of the nation while helping curb high rates of healthcare expense.

Why implement a wellness program?
Adults with multiple risk factors are expensive employees in terms of insurance utilization, reduced productivity, and increased absenteeism. In fact, an employee with five or more risks will have approximately 21 hours of excess nonproductive time every month according to research done at the University of Michigan by Dee Edington, PhD.

This equates to a $10 per hour employee with five or more risk factors costing a company $210 per month, just in lost productivity. By identifying and reducing those risk factors, you can show a demonstrable improvement in productivity and profitability.

Approximately 50 percent of the workforce experiences a problem known to reduce productivity that often can be successfully addressed through an effective wellness 
program. On average, more than 50 percent of each employer’s employees will have three or more risk factors categorizing them as moderate to high risk.

If you are not actively developing relationships with local corporations, you are missing out on the hottest growth area in healthcare.  However, developing corporate relationships isn’t as easy as it sounds.  You can do it on your own but you should consider an affiliation with an organization that provides efficient and effective ways to develop corporate relationships and can provide you with training in corporate wellness and can assist you in providing support to your comprehensive wellness program.

David E. Wade, DC, CCSP, CCST, CHC is the president and founder of the Wellness Education Foundation, a nationwide nonprofit organization.  He can be reached at 800-287-9488 or through www.wellnesseducationfoundation.org.