Posts from — December 2008

Small and large organizations carry a significant proportion of the provision of health care for families in this country by offering health care insurance for their workers. With the escalating increase in health care cost many organizations are attempting to slow the increase of health care insurance premiums by offering innovative cost control programs. Greater emphasis is being put on primary prevention to keep workers healthy and secondary prevention to identify and treat health conditions before they can become serious.

At some workplaces, workers are being encouraged to take greater responsibility for their health related behaviors through risk rated incentive packages. Linking wellness to employee benefits of gain sharing and co-payment cost reductions will provide new opportunities requiring efforts of collaboration between the human resource managers and the Wellness Program specialists. These two sets of experts may also work together for the ongoing evaluation of cost effective Corporate Health Promotion Programs.

In conjunction with the above programs the majority of large organizations also have a nurse or physician on staff to dispense onsite medical and preventive care. Some programs have also found it cost effective to provide their own physical therapy programming to assist injured and infirm workers in regaining optimal functioning. A broad-based selection of health related employee services and benefits would include the following:

• Free or low cost health screenings provided on site by organization clinical personnel or through outside contractors:
Serum cholesterol
Colorectal cancer screen
Blood pressure testing
Mammography
Vision and hearing testing
Diabetes
• Referral and follow-up procedures (e.g., Hypertension, Cholesterol, Cancer)
• First Aid and emergency care
• Disease control and prevention programs
• Child and infirm adult care services
• Pre-retirement and financial planning
• Ongoing learning/educational opportunities
• Coordination of organization picnics and outings
• Parent-child work visitation programs
• Workers compensation/rehabilitation