Wellness

Recently, Ambrose held its first employee health and wellness fair. We're a bit different from most organizations in that we are a PEO, a professional employer organization, meaning that companies - mostly smaller ones - contract with us to outsource their HR and payroll functions, including benefits. We wanted to host a health and wellness fair for our clients' employees, but didn't want to charge them for it. So we faced the challenge of conducting a health and wellness fair at minimal-to-no cost.

Open enrollment is often one of the busiest times of the year for most benefit professionals. After finishing all of the plan updates, budgets and the communication strategy, we have the open enrollment meetings. With any luck, you won't find yourself in a crowded room of people at the height of flu season. For those of you not lucky enough to escape air travel, late nights and multiple meetings, here are some tips for staying healthy during open enrollment time.

Last week, Meritain Health, a provider of self-funded health and wellness plans, found that 89% of participants had improved blood pressure and 77% had reduced LDL cholesterol.

The excise tax remains employers’ No. 1 concern with the health care reform law, with 45% of employers surveyed recently by Mercer citing it as a significant concern.

More than half of the average company’s employees do not engage in wellness programs because they don’t think the programs are relevant to them. Thus, changing their minds also requires a change in how the programs are rolled out.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc will no longer offer health insurance to new part-time U.S. employees who work fewer than 24 hours a week and will charge workers who use tobacco more for coverage as health care costs rise, the company said on Friday.

Full-time U.S. workers who have chronic health troubles or are overweight cost more than $153 billion in lost productivity each year from absenteeism, according to a Gallup-Healthways study released on Monday.

The Obama administration is pulling the plug on a long-term, home-care program included in the 2010 health care reform law that Republicans have derided as a budget trick.

What good are company wellness programs if employees don't know about them and the services offered? Just like other employee benefits, wellness programs can be under-appreciated and under-used if they're not properly communicated.

It’s getting close to Halloween, which has many of us thinking about ghosts, witches, vampires and zombies. Apparently, the Obama administration is even getting into the spirit of the season, with a zombie of its own. Perhaps, though, you know it better as the CLASS Act. CLASS (Community Living Assistance Services and Supports) is the famous/infamous portion of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act that would allow voluntary enrollees to participate in a public long-term care…