Corporate Wellness

Executive Summary
The United States faces a health epidemic of unparalleled proportion – an epidemic that is substantiated by hard facts. Expenditures for health care in the United States continue to rise and have reached more than $1.66 trillion in 2005. Much of this cost is attributed to the diagnosis and treatment of chronic diseases (Syndrome X), and conditions such as diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular diseases, hypertension, and asthma.

• Approximately 129 million U.S. adults are overweight or obese which costs this Nation anywhere from $69 billion to 117 billion per year.

• In 2000, an estimated 17 million people (6.2 percent of the population) live with diabetes, costing the U.S. approximately $132 billion. People with diabetes lost more than 8 days per year from work, accounting for 14 million disability days.

• Heart disease and stroke are the first and third leading causes of death in the U.S. In 2003 alone, 1.1 million Americans had heart attacks. Cardiovascular disease cost the Nation more than $300 billion in health cars cost each year.

A much smaller amount is spent on preventing these conditions. There is accumulating evidence that much of the morbidity and mortality associated with these chronic diseases are preventable.

For many Americans, individual behavior and lifestyle choices influence the development and course of these chronic conditions. Unhealthy behaviors, such as unhealthy diets, lack of physical activity, and tobacco use are risk factors for many chronic conditions and diseases. A high caloric diet and sedentary lifestyle inevitably result into excessive weight gain. Overweight and obesity are risk factors for a large number of chronic diseases, most significantly, type 2 diabetes, congestive heart failure, stroke, and hypertension. Encouraging and teaching individuals to develop healthy habits and practices can reduce the burden of chronic disease across the country.

Employers across America are paying the price for unhealthy lifestyles through high cost of health care insurance coverage, but many are beginning to pass that burden on to employees, especially those who refuse to change unhealthy habits. Some employers are offering wellness programs with incentives to tackle the problem through prevention strategies.

Research reveals that approximately 39% of employees that have health care benefits do not use them effectively. It is a proven fact that implementing an annual health and wellness program at work will, in effect, maximize value of your current investment in benefits, as well as provide a tangible basis for lower premiums going forward.

Our corporate wellness services are designed to identify health risk and lower overall healthcare cost by:

• Stratified risk evaluation (low, medium, high)

• Identify highest risk individuals

• Documentation of health risk improvement

• Program participation intervention

• Analysis and Evaluation Reports

• Aggregate data analysis of target population risks

• In general, most medical self-care training programs will show a benefit to cost ratio somewhere between 2:1 and 5:1, which means a savings between two and five dollars for every dollar invested in a health & wellness initiative.

• A number of well-designed studies report in clinical literature that document medical self-care’s impact on healthcare utilization. Findings reveal these programs reduce visits to healthcare providers between 7 and 19 percent. In addition, studies show visits for minor health conditions are reduced by 35 percent as a result of a well-designed health & wellness program.