Wellness

Why are employers still offering health care benefits and increasing worksite wellness activities? It’s not rocket science. Employers don’t offer benefits because they are altruistic. They do so primarily to recruit and retain talent and to ensure workers have the mental and physical capacity to perform their best on the job.

Whether your business is self-insured or purchases a health plan, it’s time to bend the cost curve in your favor. Using a combination of robust data analytic tools and care management, population health management offers benefit managers a proactive approach to improve the health and well-being for members whose chronic conditions can account for 75% or more of your healthcare expenses.

A new study conducted by human capital risk management firm HCMS Group suggests that employers who offer vision benefits to their employees might be able to save as much as $5.8 billion in cost savings over a four year period, partly due to the preventative screening opportunities afforded by low-cost eye check-ups.

With all the implications that the Affordable Care Act has on employer’s health insurance obligations, it’s easy to overlook its effects on workplace wellness programs. Yet these programs are very much affected by Obamacare.

The strength of a business relies on its bottom line, and it takes a productive and engaged workforce to help meet those financial goals, particularly for a client-focused organization, such as EPIC, an employee benefits brokerage firm in Petaluma, Calif. With this in mind, EPIC has implemented a wellness program to improve its employees’ health and has watched it grow and positively influence employees’ lives.

A new wellness tool from the National Business Coalition on Health provides simple, best-practices recommendations.

As 2013 comes to a close, we’re taking a look at some of the most popular stories on our website this year. Here are the top five blog items of 2013.

Improved health is the top New Year’s resolution among employees, as 82% say they pledge to lose weight, increase exercise or reduce stress in 2014, according to a survey from Keas.

Here are two employers using biometric screenings to drive the larger message of healthy living home to their employees.

The University of Alabama has made impressive wellness strides by promoting and integrating their screening initiative in an overarching well-being campaign. For this collegiate employer, what is even more important than the health numbers stemming from biometrics is the context for those numbers.

Used to assess and evaluate changes in employee health, biometric health screenings are a crucial component of a comprehensive worksite health program. As a result, biometric health screenings are increasing in popularity and are being implemented by more and more employers.

Wellness is not just about fitness or smoking cessation anymore.

Smoking cessation programs offer insight to the real issues affecting health contingent programs.

Tailoring health goals, as well as the resources and programs employees use to achieve them, is the key to creating long-lasting behavior change, says one expert.

The number of people who died in hospitals as a result of medical mistakes is approaching half a million, according to Patient Safety America. Medical mistakes not only cost lives and misery but billions of dollars in extra costs, most of which is paid by employers.

Statins will be recommended for almost 33 million Americans, about twice the number under previous guidelines. Heart disease is the No. 1 killer worldwide, accounting for 1 in 4 U.S. deaths.

Nearly one in five doesn't even know if their company has a wellness program. Are your workers entirely ignorant of your offerings?

“What I really believe is that no company in the corporate wellness space is truly taking advantage of the power of mobile technology to build mobile-first wellness programs for employees and corporations,” says Dr. Rajiv Kumar, ShapeUp’s founder and CEO.

If people with chronic conditions only spend about an hour a year with their physician, how can they stay adherent with medication and their disease education for the 8,759 hours they’re outside the doctor’s office? The most promising answer is through mobile devices.

The majority of employers questioned by the NEBGH cite “employees’ poor health habits” as one of their top three obstacles to maintaining affordable health coverage.