The truth behind 6 wellness myths
March 18, 2013 10:36 AM
1. Wellness program participants cost less than non-participants, therefore the programs are effective.
Fact: People who volunteer (or are paid) to join a program always will outperform people who dont. Instead, to make a valid comparison, you need to randomly divide volunteers into equal groups, give each group the same financial incentive and then administer the wellness program for just one group. This would create two equally compensated and motivated experimental and control groups. [Image: Shutterstock]
2. Wellness programs target high- and medium-risk people. Thus, overall risk declines.
Fact: Just because some high-risk people shift to lower risk does not mean that the whole group has improved. Some people who were lower risk may have become higher risk at the same time. [Image: Shutterstock]
3. A wellness plan can dramatically reduce spending compared to trend.
Fact: Trend has declined recently for everyone, for many reasons not related to wellness. [Image: Shutterstock]
4. Both wellness savings and ROI have been amply proven in peer-reviewed scientific literature.
Fact: None of the peer-reviewed articles were population-based, plausibility-tested, or separated risk-sensitive events from other events. The New England Journal of Medicine published a story showing that large claimed treatment effects are usually wrong anyway. When the treatment is taking a survey or having blood pressure measured, the impact cannot be huge in any case. [Image: Shutterstock]
5. Safeways wellness program has been thoroughly studied and kept its costs flat for several years. In fact, it inspired the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Acts employer incentives and wellness subsidies.
Fact: Safeways zero trend, described in a Washington Post story, began before its wellness program did. The companys cost trend increased sharply when it started the program. The Safeway wellness program covered only salaried employees, and the massive savings is out of proportion with the number of people the program covered. [Image: Bloomberg]
6. Screenings and early detection programs save a lot of money by preventing heart attacks and other costly events.
Fact: Instead of savings, screenings lead to follow-up care and overtreatment of minor illness. Indeed, the entire screen more, screen often strategy is collapsing under the weight of its illogical framework: There are real harms from screening, as the Journal of the American Medical Association reports. [Image: Shutterstock]
