I recently read an article about a company wellness program that consisted primarily of a company health fair. At the health fair, an employee who thought he was otherwise healthy took a Prostate-Specific Antigen test and discovered he had elevated PSA levels. He was encouraged to follow up with his doctor, who discovered he had prostate cancer. He was ultimately cured and his doctor said he probably would have died had it not been for the health fair screening.
That’s a great human interest story and certainly lends some encouragement to companies considering instituting some type of wellness program. Of course, wellness programs can also be a pain to implement. Last week I had the opportunity to present a seminar on the legal requirements of wellness programs and identified many important issues, like discrimination and privacy concerns, which would seem to discourage implementation of wellness programs.
