Wellness Program Blog

Dr. Moore of Nationwide maintains that immunization is the most cost-effective treatment in medicine. for  instance, vaccinating kids against the influenza virus averages a savings (including health care costs, parents’ missed work, etc.) of up to $35 per vaccine recipient.

And specialists predict that estimate is low, because it doesn’t take into account the rapid spread of the flu.

The American Association of Family Physicians’ Web site, www.aafp.org, offers a advised adult immunization schedule developed by the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.

This schedule, tiered by age and chances of exposure, recommends diphtheria, tetanus, influenza, pneumonococcal, hepatitis B, hepatitis C, measles, mumps and rubella, varicella and meningococcal vaccinations.

Ideas to incorporate prevention and early detection –  

• Hold a health fair and invite companies that provide screening services for such conditions as blood pressure, blood iron, cholesterol, Body Mass Index  and diabetes.

• Make available educational materials about well-baby care and immunizations.

• Select healthcare coverage plans that include wellness check-ups and immunizations.

• Provide onsite mammograms for workforce.

• Sponsor on-site flu shots to coincide with flu season.

Benefits of Stress Reduction Programs

While stress cannot be eliminated from life, or even from the workplace, coping skills could be developed with relative ease. Stress management skills lead to lowered absenteeism and more effective, more productive staff.

Because stress has been shown to contribute to such physical conditions as ulcers, high blood pressure and stroke, stress reduction has a direct impact on improving physical health.

Studies have shown that heart patients who attend stress management programs have 42 percent lower health care costs. Other studies have documented a 50 percent reduction in medical services use when stress management programs are employed.

Furthermore, Staff Member Assistance Program (EAP) professionals estimate that 20 percent of any workforce is affected by personal problems that can influence work performance.

Stress reduction tactics to consider –  

• Give on-site yoga or meditation classes.

• Organize support groups among personnel.

• Sponsor stress management courses during the workday.

• Provide an worker assistance program that includes both counseling and referral.

• Provide onsite counseling for employees in a work-related trauma, like the death of a colleague.

Advantages of Prenatal Care and Breastfeeding

The old proverb “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” is especially relevant to when applied to preventive measures taken during pregnancy, when a few extra ounces of birth weight can save a child’s life.

During pregnancy, simple precautions can help avoid catastrophic results; giving up use of tobacco, for instance, drastically reduces the risk of miscarriage and pre-term labor.

The March of Dimes reports that if all women took adequate folic acid before conception and during pregnancy, the number of babies born with a neural tube defect could drop by as much as 70%.

The physical and emotional advantages of proper prenatal care to a mother and child are underscored by a strong business case for offering prenatal wellness benefits. Nationwide’s Chief Medical Director, Dr. Michael Moore, estimates costs to care for one baby delivered prematurely could approach $500,000.

First steps in fostering a prenatal program –  

• Invite the March of Dimes to present information about prenatal health at an employee brownbag lunch or breakfast meeting.

• Hold prenatal care information classes for interested personnel during lunch.

• Provide educational materials about the effects of alcohol, drugs and use of tobacco on an unborn child.

• Give incentives for adopting healthy life choices during pregnancy.

• Give prenatal programs and education as part of the business healthcare package.

Benefits of Use of tobacco Cessation Programs

Instances of respiratory diseases, cancer and other diseases could be decreased through smoking cessation efforts. Smoking cessation programs can provide gigantic opportunities for improved health.

The American Cancer Society reports that use of tobacco personnel cost corporations an typical of $1,429 per smoker a year in increased healthcare costs over non-use of tobacco personnel.

Beginning a smoking cessation program costs an average of $45 per worker per year, saving organizations an average of $1,383 per year for each worker who quits smoking. In addition, the American Cancer Society reports that smokers are absent from work 50 percent more often than nonsmokers.

They’re also 50 percent more likely to be hospitalized and have 15 percent higher disability rates. Smoking lowers onthe- job productivity as well. Staff Members who take four 10- minute use of tobacco breaks a day work more than a month less per year than workers who do not take smoke breaks.

Places to begin with use of tobacco cessation programs –  

• Develop a “buddy” program to provide encouragement for those who commit to stop use of tobacco.

• Make available lung capacity tests at company health fairs.

• Consider reimbursement for use of tobacco cessation tools –  nicotine gum, patches and inhalers.

• Limit smoking areas in the worksite.

• Present onsite tobacco use cessation sessions.

Advantages of Nutrition Programs

Nutrition directly impacts nearly every aspect of physical and psychological health. A healthy diet can help protect against such conditions as heart disease, diabetes, arthritis, stroke, certain cancers and depression. Obesity, which is among the most common conditions linked to diet, affects a record number of American Citizens.

The American Journal of Health Promotion estimates the cost of obesity to USA business to exceed $12.5 billion in healthcare, sick leave, and life and disability insurance.

Furthermore, one study reports that obesity raises health care costs by 36% and medication costs by 77%.  To offset the health risks of obesity and poor diet, many businesses have committed to assisting employees ensure proper nutrition and undertake weight control programs.

Well-liked nutrition programs –  

• Provide personnel with educational materials or classes on proper nutrition provided by a registered dietitian.

• Provide on-site Weight Watchers meetings or other weight control programs.

• Provide nutritious and health conscience meal options in the cafeteria and vending machines.

• Clearly post nutrition information for all cafeteria and vending machine items.

• Give low cost, healthful, take-home dinner options for staff and their families.

• Draw attention to healthful eating habits by providing token incentives, such as pencils or ID holders, for achieving five fruits or vegetable servings a day for a week.

Nutrition programs in action

While many businesses address weight management through fitness programs, businesses are increasingly focusing on nutrition through separate programming. Recognizing the productivity increase and decreased medical expenditures that come with maintaining a healthful weight, many businesses may help pay for obesity treatments for employees.

For  instance, to enhance the health of dangerously obese employees, drug maker Wyeth reportedly pays for stomach-shrinking surgeries that carry price tags of up to $40,000.

A 2003 Society of Human Resource Management study shows that 24 percent of corporations offer weight loss programs. In Ohio, Honda offers an on-site, registered dietitian who provides individual or group consultations on weight control. Body fat analysis and BMI  measurements are available to staff members at any time.

At Grange Insurance’s Columbus headquarters, the cafeteria chef analyzes meals and provides staff members basic nutrition information, including Weight Watchers points.

A lot of businesses partner with the American Cancer Society to offer nutrition information through the “5-ADay” program, which provides employers free signage and educational materials about the importance of consuming five servings of fruits and vegetables a day.

The program also offers a fruit and vegetable “frequency card” that gives workforce a free portion of fruit or vegetables after he or she’s purchased a preset number.

Benefits of Exercise Plans

Exercise decreases weight, decreases risks of heart attack and stroke, assists to control blood pressure and diabetes, and improves mood. Studies increasingly show that exercise may also help reduce the occurrence of certain kinds of cancer.

Researchers at the Centers for Illness Control and Avoidance (CDC) recently documented another major advantage –  exercise improves the health of the nation’s medical care expenditures.3 According to the CDC, physically active individuals incur $865 less per year in medical costs than inactive people .

Dr. Michael Moore, vice president and chief medical director at Nationwide Insurance in Columbus, maintains that exercise is the most effective tool in health maintenance. “When you may prescribe exercise in a pill, it’d be the number-one prescribed treatment in the world,” he said.

In step with Dr. Moore’s prescription, nearly one-third of USA businesses help workforce pay for fitness center memberships, as reported by an Associated Press report. Subsidizing fitness center memberships is just one way businesses encourage active life choices.

Popular fitness-forward programs –  

• Start a company softball or volleyball league.

• Compile and distribute information about opportunities to join athletic groups in your community.

• Offer partial or complete reimbursement for fitness facility memberships.

• Hold aerobics, karate, yoga or other kinds of fitness classes on-site.

• Provide extended lunch hours for workers who commit to lunchtime exercise programs.

• Introduce an on-site fitness facility that is free, or available at a nominal cost, to employees and their families.

• Conduct on-site wellness fairs that include fitness demonstrations and promote fitness activities and resources.

Health Promotion program means different things to different businesses. Effective wellness programs could be as simple as bringing bushel baskets of fresh fruit into break rooms to encourage better consuming. They could be as comprehensive as building fitness facilities on-site or compensating for obesity treatments.

A driving factor behind the push toward wellness spans companies of all kinds, sizes and cultures –  that is, health care expenses are spilling over the corporate belt buckle.

The annual cost of medical services in the U.S. is rising at seven times the rate of inflation.  And the rise in healthcare costs is one boom pundits expect our economy to sustain.1

This trend makes it increasingly difficult for businesss to maintain current levels of insurance coverage. In 2003, health care inflation forced 65% of corporations to increase employees’ share of health care costs.

Seventy-nine% of large firms said they’ll increase workers’ share of health care costs in 2004.2 But with lost benefits and increased financial burdens come lost morale and productivity.

Businesss are searching for another way. While businesses can’t control many of the supply-side elements contributing to rising healthcare costs-malpractice insurance rates, the nursing shortage-they can help curb demand. That’s why efforts are being redirected from illness to wellness.

The case for wellness is supported by an ever growing body of evidence demonstrating the high costs associated with controllable health risks –

• One study reports that obesity raises healthcare costs by 36% and medication costs by 77%.  

• Michigan officials estimate lack of exercise cost the state nearly $8.9 billion in 2002, a cost estimated to be largely borne by companys through insurance premiums and lost productivity.

• The not-for-profit National Committee for Quality Assurance reports that the estimated average cost for postnatal care for women who did not receive prenatal care was $2,341 more than for women who had.  And the indirect costs of unhealthful behavior could be just as high.

Data shows that healthier staff members are more productive, spending more time at work and showing increased “presenteeism,” or productivity, while there. Moreover, healthier staff members use fewer medical services.

The five leading causes of death in the U.S. – heart illness, cancer, stroke, chronic obstructive pulmonary illness and diabetes –  are directly linked to unhealthful lifestyles. Obviously, stimulating healthful habits presents an opportunity to improve employees’ well being, reduce the need for healthcare services and help control costs.

Offering employee wellness benefits – big or small – represents an intersection between corporate social responsibility and responsibility to stakeholders. Between employee health and corporate health. It is often the right thing to do for workers and employers.

Research by Traveler’s Corp. shows a $3.40 return for every dollar invested in Health Promotion Programs. for many companies, the option to offer staff member health promotion benefits is easy-one where conscience and pragmatism align.

The challenge arises in selecting  the health promotion programs that will deliver the most impact based on trends in your employees’ health risks and medical claims costs.

From big companies to the corner deli, business owners welcome ways to increase productivity, decrease absenteeism and cut costs. Likewise, health promotion programs can range from modest to elaborate.

In determining where to focus a organization’s limited resources, looking at costs, benefits and best practices is a good beginning point. This section profiles six aspects of wellness and explores their benefits to workers and corporations.

When it comes to working wellness into your workforce, you want someone who knows the ins and outs of wellness, and who can counsel workforce and provide main care – all within the context of the current regulatory and legal environment.

AAOHN’s survey reported that more than half of personnel (61 percent) want to receive wellness information from a health care specialist, like a consultant or an on-site occupational health nurse (OHN), compared to pamphlets or pamphlets (18 percent) or human resources (HR) staff (15 percent).

OHNs can develop, implement and evaluate components of work site health promotion programs such as screening programs, exercise/fitness courses, stress management, smoking cessation, nutrition and weight control programs, in addition to chronic disease management programs.

Plus, OHNs can help personnel navigate through complicated healthcare plans and may even serve as a triage point between personnel and their personal health care providers.

Employees might refrain from seeing their health care provider when it means time away from work, inconvenient parking, waiting time in the office and co-pays.

In situations where staff members are under treatment for chronic conditions like heart illness, on-site nurses can routinely monitor risk factors like blood pressure or cholesterol on a regular basis.

It is often easier for an employee to ask an onsite nurse for information about symptoms or prescription medication than it’s to schedule a follow-up visit to an individual health care provider.

Benefits realized by companys include enhanced worker morale and retention, a recruitment advantage, increased productivity and reduced time away from work.

In businesses with a safety department, the OHN can evaluate and address work-related health issues, including participation in workstation evaluations to correct potential ergonomic problems, and proactively addressing muscle strains by developing stretching programs and involving workforce in leading stretches.

Wellness Programs are good for waistlines and your bottom line

In today’s hectic world, most of us are spending more time at work, and have increasingly less time to look after our health. for a long time, businesss have understood the benefits associated with keeping workers well – increased productivity from reduced absenteeism and reduced disability claims.

For these reasons, coupled with the fact that many companies realized double-digit health care costs last year, companies should consider Health Promotion Programs as a way to keep workforce healthy.

But just how important are these wellness programs to employees? How often are they willing to take part in wellness programs designed to positively impact their wellness? Who do staff trust to provide them with important information about their health?

Answers to these questions and more were lately garnered from a published study  commissioned by the American Association of Occupational Health Nurses Inc. (AAOHN).

The AAOHN survey questioned 500 staff members nationwide about their perceptions of Wellness Programs. More than three-quarters of all participants indicated these health promotion programs are a good way to improve their overall health, and almost 60% consider these offerings an incentive to remain with their current company.

Employee retention and turnover impact the bottom line, so building health promotion programs into the work site culture is a valuable way to help retain talented employees also to enhancing personal health and workplace productivity.

Health Promotion wish list

Workers appear to have their own agenda when it comes to their health. With new pressures resulting from an unstable economy, national security threats and work/balance issues, it’s not surprising that 85% of survey respondents cited stress management as a priority topic for work site wellness.

In addition to stress, other preferred topic areas include health screening programs (84 percent), exercise/fitness programs (84 percent), health insurance education (81 percent) and disease management workshops (80 percent).

In addition to lifestyle and personal health issues, those asked expressed concern about work-related health issues, including strains and injuries resulting from lifting or task-oriented muscle repetition, exposure to harmful substances, personal injury, vision changes as a result of computer work and workplace violence.

Beginning a Wellness Program

With such a broad range of health concerns, a key goal for businesss is finding a way to proactively address the health needs of the biggest number of workforce, and effectively change unhealthful behaviors, promote wellness and ward off disease and disease.

Printed materials like brochures, posters, fliers or brochures present an easy solution. But it is crucial that you remember that different people  require different formats for learning.

A good rule of thumb –  provide information in a selection of learning formats such as videos, flyers, health-related quizzes, display boards, lunch and learn presentations and reimbursement or incentive programs.

This assumes you have overcome the first hurdle – getting individuals  to sign on to a wellness program. While survey respondents indicated wellness programs are important, just six out of 10 (60 percent) announced that they participated in the wellness programs at their corporations.  The other 40% cited lack of interest and lack of time as deterrents.

This points to the need for a robust, structured wellness program using a creative approach, with an incentive for participation and effective wellness program advertising.

By investing in an organized wellness program headed by a licensed healthcare professional such as an on-site nurse, organizations can give workforce the access to the medical information they want, and increase participation and generate interest at the same time.

The result – staff become savvier healthcare consumers who feel more in charge of their personal health.  And healthier staff make for a healthier bottom line.

Health promotion programs are designed to help increase the overall health and awareness of health related issues of staff in the workplace.

While these wellness programs are set up to help individuals set, work toward and maintain healthy lifestyle options, they sometimes fail.

There are five primary reasons health promotion programs are unsuccessful.  The first reason is because of lack of worker interest. It is crucial when presenting a new health promotion program to employees that every effort is made to communicate the all encompassing benefits of the health promotion program to the corporation and to the individual.

Next, health promotion programs can fail because of lack of staff resources. If a health promotion program is introduced but there are few resources to offer with the health promotion program, it will be difficult for an employee to want to take advantage of it.

As part of the previous reason for failure of a wellness program, inadequate funding also can set a wellness program up for failure. With little money to promote a wellness program, it may be challenging to spread the word about the benefits of a wellness program.

An all too frequent reason that wellness programs don’t reach optimal success is because the wellness program and its coordinators fail to engage high risk staff. When high risk staff have the majority of the health issues in a worksite, they must be the most targeted person for a wellness program.

To see 100% participation is the optimal goal, but to engage those with the most severe health concerns is a gigantic priority.

Lastly, the inability to enlist the support of executive management is a significant reason why health promotion programs might not be successful. Without the endorsement, support and flexibility that executive management can offer a health promotion program, it is far less likely that it’ll actually succeed.

Health promotion programs succeed for just as many reasons as they fail. With engaged and motivated staff, obtaining wellness goals is attainable and promising.