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Free smoking cessation programs. Cash credits for workers taking self-assessment health surveys. On-site vaccinations and fitness training classes. Nutritional counseling. Subsidized gym memberships.
Employers have spent plenty in recent years to keep employees healthy, hoping that will keep them on the job and less likely to use health care insurance. That can lead to lower health care costs which were estimated in one national survey to average more than $7,000 per employee per year.
The return on investment in wellness is hard to measure, though, making such programs targets as companies cut jobs, benefits and other expenses to stem financial losses amid the recession. But companies say the programs can work. A study by insurer MetLife found 94 percent of companies with wellness programs said they reduced medical costs.
“The whole point [of wellness programs] is healthier employees and that means lower health care costs overall,” said Stephen Holmes, spokesman for Home Depot, which has added to its list of wellness benefits even though the company has battled declining sales lately.
“We’re not pulling back,” Holmes said. “We’re investing in the health of our associates.”
Wellness program supporters now hope a fledgling economic recovery, combined with growing political and social support for such programs, will cause employers to expand and improve them. In Washington, legislators are considering a bill that would grant tax credits to companies offering wellness programs. The debate over health care reform also has put a spotlight on costs and benefits.
“CEOs have a tender ear to this issue now. They see their health care premiums continuing to go up every year and if you can show them a cost savings to health and wellness programs they’ll see it as a business strategy,” said Renzie Richardson, chief executive of Be Healthy For Life, a Cumming-based wellness consultant to small and midsize companies.
Companies should make wellness part of their culture, said Christopher Matthews, vice president and senior health consultant for the Segal Co., a benefits, compensation and human resources consulting firm in New York.
“If they’re pennywise and pound foolish, some organizations are cutting back,” he said. “The organizations that are successful at this are the ones that pound this hard.”
In a June 2009 employee benefits survey of 522 employers, the Society for Human Resource Management found 72 percent offered wellness information, 64 percent provided vaccinations, and 59 percent had wellness programs. Tobacco use cessation programs were offered by 39 percent, weight loss by 30 percent and on-site fitness classes by 12 percent.
Employers who responded generally said they were more likely to add certain wellness benefits in the future than reduce or eliminate them. For example, 5 percent said they planned to add a weight loss program, versus 3 percent who said they would cut or drop one. While 3 percent planned to trim or drop a smoking cessation program, 4 percent planned to add one. Overall, the number of companies offering wellness benefits has grown since 2005, the survey indicated.
The study also found that companies were more likely to trim financial and compensation benefits such as undergraduate educational assistance, incentive bonuses, matching charitable contributions, payroll advances and stock purchase plans.
In metro Atlanta, Home Depot and UPS are among large employers that offer wellness programs.
Among Home Depot’s offerings: a $25 per pay period credit to employees (and also to their spouses) who take a voluntary health self-assessment survey, and free flu shots in season. About 25 percent got the shots.
For a company with 300,000 employees, the total cost is not insignificant, Holmes said, although he said he could not provide a figure. Wellness advocates say that over the long haul such costs are offset by savings in employee health insurance premiums which can rise about 10 percent annually, depending on inflation and employee usage.
UPS offers employees at its Sandy Springs corporate center the use of a fitness center, although there is a fee for membership. It also provides employees free tobacco use cessation and weight loss programs, and health fairs.
The approximately 700 employees in the Department of Aviation at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport have been given pedometers to calculate their fitness walking at work, tips on dental care and footwear choice, and tours of the airport’s food service options, with an emphasis on the healthy possibilities.
Some employees also participate in twice-a-week fitness happy hours. They are allowed to leave their posts early and head to a room where they do exercise such as yoga and pilates under the guidance of a trainer working for Quick Fitness Solutions. The Atlanta company provides on-site workplace wellness programs that range from exercise to chiropractic care.
Richardson said while employers continue to offer such programs, they are more than ever looking for “the accountability piece.”
“Two or three years ago,” she said, “it was one of those warm and fuzzy things companies used for recruiting. But with health care costs continuing to go up, they have also begun to see the link between healthy employees and productivity.”
Source: The Atlanta-Journal Constitution, David Markiewicz, 15 Nov 2009
For Alzheimer’s, prevention is the best medicine. A holistic Alzheimer’s disease prevention strategy involving mind, body, nutrition, and stress – one that prevents cognitive decline and actually enhances mental capacity – is important.
Your brain is as much flesh and blood as the rest of your body. It is not some mysterious black box. When well cared for, it retains its performance. When neglected, it decays.
A preventative lifestyle is especially important, because the latest research shows that only 30% of Alzheimer’s cases are genetic. The vast majority of cases – 70% – are preventable.
Alzheimer’s is a multi-factor disease:
STRESS – Stress hormones are a natural response to release more energy when needed, but with today’s constant stressors, stress hormones can stay at high levels in the blood continuously. In particular, high levels of cortisol can block the uptake of blood sugar by neurons, causing them to die – and increasing your chances of developing memory loss. Stress management is very important, as there is a very high correlation between high cholesterol, high blood pressure, high cortisol – and Alzheimer’s. Some proven techniques for stress management include meditation, guided hypnosis, prayer, and massage. There are many ways to lower stress, but what’s most important is that you use them regularly.
EXERCISE – Both physical and mental, can have a great impact on Alzheimer’s risk. Cardiovascular exercise boosts blood flow. And more blood flow equals a healthier brain. Regular physical exercise has been proven to reduce your risk of Alzheimer’s by as much as 50%. A good place to start is making sure you exercise three days a week. Regular mental exercise has been reported to reduce Alzheimer’s risk by 70%. Fortunately, brain aerobics are easy. To be considered brain aerobics, an activity needs to engage your attention, involve more than one sense, and break a routine activity in an unexpected, nontrivial way. Everyone should partake in mental exercise as much as physical exercise.
NUTRITION – Nutrition affects your body, and so it affects your brain, too. The main idea is to avoid foods that cause inflammation, such as red meat. It causes swelling that releases free radicals and damages your neurons. However, the right proteins, like salmon, and a vast intake of vegetables and fruits (like blueberries and spinach) can actually repair the damage and improve your memory. Finally, folic acid and vitamins C and E can reduce your risk by 20% when taken together.
PHARMACEUTICALS – Drugs at the proper time can help restore memory loss. Several medications have shown promise in partially restoring memory at different stages of Alzheimer’s. Hormone replacement therapy can also be used to boost hormone levels when they are low.
By using holistic Alzheimer’s disease prevention strategies, you can benefit by boosting your cognitive performance as well. By lowering stress, eating better, taking regular physical and mental exercise, you can perform better now — and ward off Alzheimer’s later.
Source: Health Central, 29 June 2009
There is a place for complementary therapies such as herbal remedies and acupuncture in Australia’s hospitals, an academic says.
Professor Marc Cohen says the therapies should be part of the drive to make the nation’s hospitals more efficient, and it would also address an often overlooked area of risk to patient health.
Studies show up to 60 per cent of Australians routinely take “natural supplements” and, Prof Cohen said, many continued to do so in hospital without telling their medical carers.
“They take it in their little bag with the pyjamas … they are taking fish oil or multi-vitamins,” Prof Cohen told AAP.
“It’s not recorded on their hospital chart, or administered by the nursing staff, and if there was herb or drug nutrient interaction no one is recording that.
“It’s an unsupervised practice that is potentially dangerous, and those barriers need to be broken down.”
Prof Cohen, who is Professor of Complementary Medicine at RMIT University, pointed to a Victorian study which found 40 per cent of patients undergoing cardiac surgery were also taking undisclosed supplements.
Taking St Johns Wort as a natural treatment for depression was known to skew a person’s necessary dosage of heart medication, he said, naming just one example of a negative interaction.
It was not just about taking better account of a patient’s supplement use, Prof Cohen said, as where complementary therapies were shown to work they should be introduced to the regime of treatment options in hospitals.
Prof Cohen is overseeing a trial in two Victorian hospitals, in which people arriving at the emergency department with back pain, migraine or injuries like a sprained ankle are offered acupuncture for pain relief.
Early results of this study showed the ancient Chinese practice could be as effective as drug-based pain relief though the research will take another three years to complete.
“We have some examples where the patient has averted being given an opiate (pain-killing drug) by being given acupuncture, and can leave within half an hour,” Prof Cohen said.
“We know some complementary therapies are very effective in chronic conditions, often they are very safe and their costs are far lower than pharmaceuticals.”
Hospitals could also offer massage, meditation, yoga and even hypnosis, said Prof Cohen, and more research into the effectiveness of different complementary therapies was needed.
He will present a paper on the issue at the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine annual scientific meeting in Melbourne on Tuesday (November 17).
Alternative health remedies are increasingly important in the health care marketplace. A new study in the Journal of Consumer Research explores how consumers choose among the many available remedies.
“Examples of the wide array of health remedy options available to consumers include drugs, supplements, acupuncture, massage therapy, Ayurveda, and Traditional Chinese Medicine (to name a few). Such medical pluralism is common in both developed and developing countries and raises the questions: How do consumers choose among health remedies, and what are the consequences for a healthy lifestyle?” write authors Wenbo Wang (New York University), Hean Tat Keh (Beijing University), and Lisa E. Bolton (Pennsylvania State University).
The authors use “lay theories of medicine” to explain how consumers choose between Western medicine and its Eastern counterparts, Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and Ayurvedic medicine.
“Western Medicine is primarily concerned with the material aspect of the body and views all medical phenomena as cause-effect sequences, relying on rigorous scientific studies and research that seeks empirical proof to all phenomena,” write the authors. “On the other hand, TCM and Ayurvedic Medicine favor a holistic approach, view the mind and body as a whole system, and rely upon inductive tools and methods for treatment.”
Based on a series of experiments and surveys in the United States, China, and India, the authors found that consumers prefer TCM (over Western medicine) when uncertain about the cause of an illness (i.e., diagnosis uncertainty)—because a holistic medicine tolerates uncertainty better than Western Medicine. Similarly, consumers prefer TCM (over Western medicine) because of lay beliefs that TCM offers an underlying cure (versus symptom alleviation by Western Medicine).
“These findings add to the growing debate over the regulation of health marketing and the delivery of health care, the role of direct-to-consumer advertising, and marketing efforts to promote a healthy lifestyle,” the authors conclude.
Source: redOrbit, 17 Nov 2009
CONSCIOUS VENTURES 