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WELLNESS UPDATE
Wellness in the Workplace
The New Year offers us an opportunity to contemplate
on our health. A chance to reflect about we should
be doing to maintain or improve the health and
wellness of our communities, especially our work
force. In this time of economic uncertainty, we need
to continue controlling the costs of health care and
enhance workers’ productivity to stay competitive in
the marketplace.
According to the Institute for Preventive Medicine,
since the1930s, if food costs had risen the same way
health care costs have, we would be paying a lot for
breakfast. For example, a dozen of eggs would cost
$80.20, a pound of coffee $64.17, and a pound of
bacon would be $122.48.
The cost of health care and health insurance has
outpaced the rate of inflation and worker’s earnings
over the last two decades.
For 2008, US health care costs were expected
to total $2.2 trillion or 16% of the gross domestic
product. Employers were expected to pay an average
of $9,312 per employee for health care, and
employees are asked to pay a greater share of this
cost. This share had been increased about 59% in a
five-year period. In fact, health care spending
accounted for 44% of the total benefit cost for
employees in 2006.
Employers have made a variety of adjustments to deal
with the increase of health care costs. These
adjustments have been based on supply management
and include increasing co-pays, higher deductibles,
and switching providers. Another approach employers
are considering is demand management. This
focuses on employees and helps them to live a
healthier lifestyle and be wiser health care
consumers. Providing a wellness program in
the workplace is a key component of this strategy
Researchers have shown employers receive many
benefits after implementing a worksite wellness
program in addition to reducing costs. These include
increased morale, improved employee health,
reduction in workers compensation claims, reduction
in absenteeism, and increase productivity. For
example, productivity is influenced by a number of
factors, for which the most important is stress,
followed by chronic medical conditions, and
lifestyle related medical conditions.
A wellness program helps employers to detect
employee risk factors and behaviors that adversely
affect health and productivity costs. An important
part of the program is the health risk appraisal.
This instrument is a questionnaire that in
conjunction with other biological measurements will
assess the health risk factors and lifestyle
behaviors affecting the health of the employees.
These are important measurements, since a great deal
of research has demonstrated there is an increase in
health costs for the employer when their employees
live unhealthy lifestyles. Research at the
University of Michigan demonstrated that employees
with lower risk factors have lower costs for
short-term disability, worker’s compensation,
absenteeism, and health care costs. Also, research
shows that when employees were moved from having
many risk factors to less risk factors the
employee’s health costs went down.
Establishing a wellness program will help to
decrease health care costs and to improve
productivity. Even by only using the health risk
appraisal it has been shown to improve health since
individuals become more aware of their health
status. Wellness programs have shown an average
return of investments (ROI) of 3.48/1 on medical
cost to 5.82/1 in reduced absenteeism.
Juan V Torres MD, MPH C2008
Contact WCORHA to find out about our Worksite
Wellness Network, which includes a Health Risk
Appraisal, biometrics, health screenings, and access
to our Online Wellness Center and monthly wellness
videos as well as other health resources.
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