Wellness Programs: Using Healthcare Analytics to Support Employee Health

Most well-designed corporate wellness programs are successful, but we’ve all seen well-intended short-lived efforts come and go over the years. The challenge is defining “well-designed” and “successful.” This third edition will focus on practical considerations for using employee healthcare analytics in your business setting to support employee health and wellness. But first, a brief background on employer-based wellness programs.

A thriving “culture of health” at any organization relies on many factors, from leadership support at all levels to shared corporate values, to formal and informal systems reinforcing healthy behaviors, to accurate, reliable, and reproducible tools to measure all aspects of the culture of health.

It’s been well-documented that custom-designed wellness products can support corporate performance, both in dollars and human capital. Examples of highly developed wellness models include the ACOEM Corporate Health Achievement Award or CHAA, HERO Employee Health and Well-Being Best Practices Scorecard, Health Risk Assessments, The Health Project C. Everett Koop National Health Awards, and health & wellness “contracts” using The Transtheoretical Model (Stages of Change) model.

Studies have shown a link between stock market price growth, financial performance, and having a great employee health program (CHAA, Koop Award). Employers attesting to comprehensive wellness programs outperformed the S&P index at rates ranging from 7-16 percentage points per year, representing a nearly doubling or tripling of earnings.

• Stock performance is tied to companies with high ratings for corporate social responsibility, employee job satisfaction, spending on human resources and acknowledged as a best place to work
• Stock values for a portfolio of companies that received high corporate health & wellness scores appreciated by 235% compared to the S&P Index of 159% over a six-year period
• Investing in funds to develop a great wellness program will not make stock prices go down
• Great wellness programs may be reliable indicators of future stock performance
• Investing in funds to create a great wellness program will not make stock prices go down
• Great wellness programs may be reliable indicators of future stock performance
• A 2018 UK study by Glassdoor of over 35,000 reviews across 164 employers found those with more satisfied employees returned ~16% more than those with less satisfied employees
• Koop Award companies outperformed the S&P Index over a 14-year period (2000-2014)

It’s also important to understand the practical concepts regarding CDC: Clinical Prevention Models. Most corporate wellness programs focus on primary and secondary prevention.

• Primary prevention aims to prevent disease or injury before it ever occurs.
• Secondary prevention focuses on early diagnosis to prompt timely interventions to prevent or minimize morbidity, reduced productivity and additional costs.
• Tertiary prevention addresses effective interventions and employee disposition once disease or impairment is evident.

Most cookie-cutter wellness programs, despite great intentions, are often doomed to failure. You can create customized, focused programs that “learn” as they grow using well-designed analytics tools to harness your unique populations’ health data. Tap into those databases we discussed in an earlier blog, such as indemnity and workers’ compensation claims, demographics, HRAs and employee surveys to customize your wellness programs for maximal impacts on your bottom line and employee health, well-being, retention and productivity.

Stay tuned for further predictive healthcare analytics blogs covering a variety of other common and important business topics.

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About the Author:

Dr. Joe Mignogna is Acuity’s Chief Medical Officer.  Connect with him at jmignogna@acuityinternational.com