Copyright 2009 SourceMedia, Inc.All Rights Reserved
Employee Benefit News
August 2009
HEALTH CARE; Pg. 40 Vol. 23 No. 8
695 words
Follow the TCBY formula to achieve wellness success
Michael Puck
A few weeks ago, I was sitting with my four-year-old son watching a TV documentary about sea turtles. It was amazing to watch the little hatchlings crawl out of the sand and begin their dangerous journey into the Gulf, facing countless predators and natural forces along the way. Only a small number of them survived long enough to becoming full-grown turtles.The image of hatchlings scrambling to the water reminded me of the many dangers, roadblocks and misinformation that wellness initiatives have to overcome before they are approved for implementation - and that is, as we all know, just the beginning of the journey. For each established wellness program, hundreds of well-intentions and maybe even well- planned wellness initiatives have never seen the light of day. They fail to make it into the water where they would have had a chance because they fall prey to the predators.If you want to make sure that your "wellness hatchling" receives the full support and buy-in of your senior management, you need to know the TCBY formula. It's a simple yet effective way to present a business case for your wellness plan.TrendShow your management where your company is heading related to health and welfare costs if you take little or no action. Present the historical trends of the last 20 years, as published by the Kaiser Family Foundation (www.kaiserfamilyfoundation.org.), which show health care costs have increased by over 540% since 1989. Projecting that trend into the future means at least another 500% increase in the next 10 years.If you really want to get your audience's attention, use your own financial and demographic data to forecast the impact on your specific company's bottom line. Download a free software tool, Train Wreck Analyzer (www.cut-healthcare-cost.com/trainwreck) that will take your data and do the calculation in less than 30 seconds. The software also produces a chart to visually support your trend statement.ConnectionOnce you have created sufficient awareness on how health care cost increases will affect the bottom line of your business, demonstrate the connection between medical costs and health risks among your insured. An excellent resource for this is the research of Professor Dee Edington from the University of Michigan Health Management Research Center (www.hmrc.umich.edu.) His research, which has been validated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, states that more than 75% of all money spent on health care is related to chronic conditions - most of which are preventable.BenchmarkUse benchmark information and studies to illustrate how the change in health risks can positively affect your company's bottom line. There are a growing number of companies effectively managing their health care costs by improving employee health that you can showcase as success stories, including Dow Chemical, Pitney Bowes, Safeway, Johnson & Johnson, REI, Waste Management, Deffenbaugh Industries and Ordnance Systems.In addition, review the most relevant data that demonstrate the gain in productivity and avoidance of cost for each health risk eliminated. Articles that I highly recommend:* "Use of a Normal Impairment Factor in Quantifying Avoidable Productivity Loss Because of Poor Health," The Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine.* "Association of Additional Health Risks on Medical Charges and Prevalence of Diabetes Within Body Mass Index Categories," The American Journal of Health Promotion.Your solutionApply your solution to the problems you have laid out. After showing the trends, making the connection between cost and health, and demonstrating what benchmark companies have achieved, your audience should be receptive and supportive of the solution you are going to present.Use this four-step formula and position yourself as the internal solution provider. Structuring your business case with the TCBY formula makes presenting a business case for wellness easy. -M.P.Contributing Editor Michael Puck, SPHR, is the director human resources for a midsize manufacturing company in Tennessee, author of "Healthcare Cost Management - The High Road" and the founder of www.8020wellness.com.
http://www.ebn.benefitnews.com/
August 3, 2009
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