Prevention Matters

Worksite wellness programs can be successful if implemented and executed correctly, a new study suggests. The study identifies six pillars that create a successful, strategically integrated wellness program regardless of an organizations size that include topics like multilevel leadership, alignment, and communication. The study examined 10 organizations across a variety of industries whose wellness programs have systemically achieved measurable results.

Worksite wellness programs have a history of being effective at increasing employee health while decreasing health care cost. Since 1995, Johnson & Johnson’s employee wellness program has cumulatively saved the company $250 million on health care, and from 2002-2008 the return was $2.71 for every dollar the company spent. Other organizations have had similar results with their worksite wellness programs. MD Anderson Cancer Center within the last 6 years was able to decrease lost works days by 80%, and the software firm SAS Institute was able to lower voluntary attrition to just 4% with their worksite wellness program.

Partnership for Prevention also recognizes the importance of worksite wellness programs with our Leading by Example initiative. The initiative includes publications designed to increase CEOs and CFOs understanding of the importance of worksite wellness programs by highlighting companies with exemplary comprehensive worksite wellness programs. Two new publications each featuring 16 companies will be released in the upcoming months.

For more information on the study please click here.


Katherine Ruffatto
Worksite Health Program Associate

Former HEW Secretary Joseph Califano says prevention is the "only sure way" to bend the cost curve when it comes to health care expenditures.

"The overarching history lesson is this: the only sure way to bend the curve and curb the rate of increase in health care costs is to keep people out of the sick care system, to put as much profit in prevention as there is in acute care, and to put financial gain and pain into how individuals take (or don't take) care of themselves," Califano said in a column for Kaiser Health News.

Califano offered a number of suggestions along these lines:

• Pay doctors to talk to patients instead of just testing, sticking, cutting and prescribing pills for them. "Brief interventions have been shown to reduce smoking, excessive drinking and eating, couch potatoing and other bad habits that drive up treatment costs," he said.
• Require all insurers to pay for preventive services like regular physical exams and to cover things such as flu and pneumonia vaccinations (as Medicare does). "Then let patients who fail to get such vaccinations and get the disease pay the related sick care costs."
• Sharply increase alcohol and tobacco taxes. "Almost thirty percent of health care spending is attributable to smoking and excessive drinking. Making alcohol and cigarettes more expensive has been shown to reduce both. (Moreover, presently such taxes are woefully inadequate: for every dollar we collect in tobacco and alcohol tax revenues, we spend about nine dollars in health care and other costs.) "
• To reduce unnecessary expensive diagnostic tests and treatments, enact tort reform. "Today the cheapest malpractice insurance for a physician is the MRI, PET or CAT scan."
• Mount a saturation public health campaign. "There was a time when seat belts were for sissies, smoking was chic and AIDS was a social curse. Now every driver buckles up, smoking has been cut in half, and AIDS is recognized as a preventable disease. We can do the same with excessive drinking and obesity."

The National Health Statistics Group reports that health care spending in 2007 grew 6.1%. The overall response to that news has been an interesting mix - one that gives you the impression that while the oncoming train is still headed for your car stuck on the crossing, at least it's slowed down a bit.

Several media reports focused on the fact that it was the lowest level of growth in health care spending in nine years. But, as Forbes noted, since the total economy grew by only 2.3% in 2007, the 6.1% hike in health care costs still means everyone’s losing ground.

Drug costs grew by only 5%, as a number of low-priced generics came on the market. But hospital and doctor spending grew 7.3% and 6.5%, respectively, and health insurance premiums grew by 6 percent.

Meanwhile, Health Affairs published a study that shows out-of-pocket medical expenses in the U.S. have grown by 40% over the last decade. Study author Kathy Paetz says it's due largely to the fact that middle-aged Americans today are 10 percent more likely to suffer from more than one chronic disease. Prevention, anyone?