F RONT OFFICE | P R AC T ICE M ANAGEM ENT
High-Level Wellness for Organizations and Individuals
Why Wellness Matters
Bruce Underwood, DrPH with Teri Hollingsworth, VP, Human Resources Services, HASC
are high and are a real issue threatening the safety of patients, care providers and organizations. Evidence shows pursuing effectively designed wellness programs that encompass broad, even holistic, definitions of health can greatly reduce costs, improve productivity and increase patient satisfaction. The bottom line: organizations benefit from healthy employees. H e a lt h c a r e co s t s
What is high-level wellness? Without an understanding of high-level wellness, or wellness, a company may find it impossible to define goals, measure impact, or report the ROI of a workforce health program. So, what constitutes wellness?
The ROI of High-Level Wellness Metrics from programs implemented in varying settings across the country show taking an active role in helping employees reach highlevel wellness has proven value: • Blue Cross Blue Shield of Indiana found its corporate fitness program has a 250% return on investment—$2.51 for every $1 invested over a five year period (American Journal of Health Promotion). • The Canadian Life Assurance Company found turnover among fitness program participants was 32.4% lower over a seven year period compared with non-participants (Canadian Journal of Public Health). • Johnson & Johnson estimates wellness programs have cumulatively saved them $250 million in healthcare costs over the last decade (Harvard Business Review). • Preliminary results from a self-insured corporation that made omega-3 supplements freely available to 800 employees showed average employee health claim costs last year of $3,929 rather than the $5,184 USA average. Overall, that’s an annual difference of $1 million. (Prostaglandins & Other Lipid Mediators).
According to the Harvard Business Review, most people and organizations narrowly define wellness. To many, it’s simply diet and exercise. But wellness is more than being physically fit or watching what you eat. In fact, wellness has come to mean many things over the last 50 years, with a societal shift from the concept of health and wellness as the absence of disease to something more all-encompassing. Appearing first in the 1960s, the word “wellness” 6 PHYSICIAN MA G A Z INE | j un e 2013
was defined by Dr. Halbert L. Dunn as an “integrated method of functioning which is oriented toward maximizing the potential of which the individual is capable. It requires that the individual maintain a continuum of balance and purposeful direction within the environment where he is functioning.” Dr. Don B. Ardell, often cited as the founder of the modern-day wellness movement, later defined wellness as “a choice to assume responsibility for the quality of your life.” The areas most closely associated with wellness, says Ardell, are “self-responsibility; exercise and fitness; nutrition; stress management; critical thinking; meaning and purpose, or spirituality; emotional intelligence; humor; play; and effective relationships.” In my own work, high-level wellness is defined as having the energy and enthusiasm to do what you want and need to do in everyday life. It is physical health that comes from the integration of the mind, body and spirit. Common to all of these definitions is the intentional move beyond considering the body in isolation. Wellness for Organizations
Organizations, including hospitals, sometimes ignore the connections between worker health and the overall health of the company. Organizations like tangibles, meaning physical health—if health is considered at all—is the focus of any potential programmatic changes instituted around wellness. When an organization understands that the total health and wellness of its workers is tied to the health of the organization—its productivity, absenteeism rates, job satisfaction/turnover rates, healthcare costs—and that these factors can be positively influenced by the level of individual wellness, real cultural change is possible. The result of this disconnect is that some organizations spend more on healthcare for their employees than on providing services. And according to WELCOA, 20% of employees are responsible for creating 80% of a company’s healthcare costs. Obviously, wellness and prevention make a difference