Penn State wellness program won’t make employees healthier

Regular guest blogger Linda K. Riddell takes Penn State to task for its use of health risk assessments. What do you think? Share your thoughts in the comments. —Andrea Davis, Managing Editor

A new wellness program at Pennsylvania State University gives employees a choice: undergo a health risk appraisal, or pay a $1,200 penalty. Faculty and staff are protesting the program as an invasion of their privacy.

What they should be protesting is the university’s wasting money on HRAs, which have never been shown to reduce costs. In fact, this kind of “general health check” has been shown to do the opposite – increase costs.

How does a cost-saving strategy boost costs? It goes to the very root of the rationale that sold the university on the program in the first place. The idea is that finding illness “early” – that is, before the person himself notices something awry – is cheaper than finding it later. And when you think about one patient, this makes some intuitive sense. A person might have high blood pressure and not know it. Meanwhile, his arteries are becoming damaged and he’s a ticking time bomb for a stroke or heart attack. Getting him onto the relatively cheap blood pressure medicines is a great deal less expensive than paying for his heart attack. 

Though this might make intuitive sense, the science does not back it up. You do not prevent one $40,000 heart attack for every one person who is on blood pressure medicine. You prevent a tiny fraction of one heart disease episode for every pill-popper. (See The Million Dollar Workplace Wellness Heart Attack Screen for an excellent walk-through of the math.) With hundreds of people – or in the University’s case, 40,000 people – you spend many more dollars on prevention to avoid the very few dollars spent on heart attacks. 

Prevention costs more than treatment, in other words.    

But, but, but …

Don’t the people who get early care live longer and healthier? In a word, no.

There are no studies showing that the routine physical, also known as a general health check, lowers the rates of death. It does not lower death from heart disease, specifically, or from cancer – two stalwarts of the early detection campaigns. Instead, it only gives people more diagnoses and more drugs. So, visiting your doctor to discover your symptom-less heart disease and cancers will not lengthen your life or save you money. 

Penn State’s vice president for human resources, Susan Basso, told National Public Radio the new wellness programs are meant to cut the rate increase from 14% down to a mere 5%. Not only is she going to be sorely disappointed, but also lots more employees will find out that they are sick and need pills. 

In short, it will not bring about more health. For the millions of dollars at stake, that’s a shame.

Linda K. Riddell is a principal at Health Economy, LLC. He can be reached at LRiddell@HealthEconomy.net.