Did you know?
♥ The World Health Organization has announced worksite wellness as one of the priority settings for health and
wellness promotion in the 21st century.
♥ Each decade, the Department of Health
and Human Services identifies a list of health goals to strive for and improve the
overall health of Americans. The program is known as “Healthy People 2020.”
♥ Health care costs and expenditures are on the rise putting the
workforce at jeopardy and the companies they work for.
♥ Chronic diseases such as heart disease, Type 2 Diabetes,
strokes, and more than 40% of cancers would be prevented if people ate
healthier, exercised, and stop using tobacco according to Making Health Care More Affordable:Estimated Savings from Care Coordination, Lifestyle Change, and System Redesignin Senator Obama’s Health Care Plan.
♥ Approximately 75% of all the money spent on health care is
potentially preventable as reported by Amanda McGrory in the article 90% of Employers are Offering Wellness
Program for BenefitsPro.
Wellness works for all
types of employers whether the company is large or small.
Wellness Distribution
and Impact
In the past, the focus
of wellness programs has been on managing “sick” employees. After all we all know being sick costs money.
So if you could make the sickness go
away then less money would be spent on health care right?
Here’s the big idea,
“manage the disease” of those employees who are already sick and then hope that
they will become healthy again. This type of thinking suggests once the sick
became healthy, the company would realize their return on investment (ROI). This seems like a logical solution. However, history has demonstrated this may be
logical but is a bad idea.
Here’s what
happens. The people who are already sick stayed sick, the healthy people became
sick and the company would not realize their ROI for three so years down the
road, if ever.
To save money on health care costs the focus needs to be on keeping
every employee healthy. That way the sick get better and the healthy stay
healthy.
The long and the short
of it is …
it costs less money to
focus on wellness than it does to treat disease and
everyone knows it.
Your partner in health,
Wellness Consultant
