Prevention Solution...
Firms Work to Adjust Healthcare Culture


HELEN DARLING calls it “revolutionary,” this effort on the part of employers to more closely monitor and improve the health of their workers. “It’s revolutionary in that businesses are actually saying to themselves, ‘if we want people to be healthy, we cannot sit back,’” says Darling. Darling, president of the National Business Group on Health, says that corporate America began getting much more involved in trying to improve clinical outcomes for its workforce about three years ago.

Dr. Dee W. Edington agrees. As Director of the Health Management Research Center at the University of Michigan, he has been charting what works in wellness programs for a quarter of a century and has seen more activity in the past three years than at any time in the last 25 years. The impetus is coming from executives fairly high on the corporate food chain, too. “There’s much more realization in the C-suite that you have to be doing something about people’s health,” says Darling. Policy experts contend that employers can help reverse the problem by changing their corporate culture and promoting health and wellness in the workplace.

Influential employers who are making headway in focusing on employee health are implementing various initiatives, according to Andrew Webber, president and CEO of the National Business Coalition on Health: (1) Pushing wellness programs; (2) Giving employees information on comparative costs and quality of providers; (3) Investigating value-based benefit designs, including CDHP/high deductible programs, to force patients to take increasing responsibility for costs; (4) Hiring disease management companies to get better monitoring of conditions and better compliance with treatment regimens; (5) Contracting directly with high-quality providers through group purchasing arrangements; (6) Working with IT companies on community and personal health records and interoperability of clinical information; (7) Setting up in-house clinics; (8) Experimenting with payment for performance by providing financial incentives for the delivery of safer and more effective and efficient care; (9) Promoting quality measurement efforts at the national level through organizations that include the National Quality Forum and the National Committee for Quality Assurance; (10) Giving employees incentives to complete health-risk assessments; and (11) Lowering or waiving copayments for prevention and critical medical services.

Edington believes that health insurance companies that are not employing wellness or even more innovative methods to affect clinical outcomes resist the natural evolutionary pull of the industry. “I think health plans have to realize that employers are focused more on improving health and less on reducing costs or cutting benefits,” says David Kasiarz, vice president for compensation, benefits, and risk management at Pepsi Bottling Group. “Health plans that understand what employers are trying to do and develop offerings to support employer priorities have an inside track.

Facing More Stress
Retirement Savings Fall as Benefits Costs Rise

THE HIGHEST stress factors continue to be saving for retirement and paying for healthcare in retirement, according to the 2007 Ameriprise Workplace Financial Planning Benefit Decisions study.

“As employer-paid benefits such as pensions and retiree healthcare go by the wayside, employees increasingly confront a confusing nexus of financial decisions related to retirement plans, health insurance, and other benefits on an annual basis,” says Rusty Field, vice president, Ameriprise Workplace Financial Planning. “Many are increasingly recognizing how financial planning can be of assistance in making effective and balanced choices.”

According to the study, more than four out of five employees (81%) would take advantage of a financial planning option if their employer paid for a portion of it as part of the employee benefits package. In addition, the study also found that financial planning helps employees get an earlier start with saving and investing in their company-sponsored retirement plans, and that they are more likely to contribute substantially throughout their lifecycle, especially for those under age 35.

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•DHS Regulation ‘On Hold’

A federal court has temporarily barred enforcement of a Homeland Security rule regarding employer responses to Social Security no-match letters. No-match letters refer to notifications sent to employers when Social Security numbers submitted by employees do not match those in the SSA database. For now, employers need to continue to do their best to make sure their employees are legal.

•Medicare Noncreditable Coverage Notice Contains Error

Individuals with noncreditable coverage who do not enroll in Medicare Part D during their initial enrollment period will have to pay higher premiums permanently when they finally enroll. The model notice on the CMS website says they have 63 days when coverage ends to enroll without being subject to the late enrollment penalty, which is not the case. CMS is aware of the problem and intends to update the noncreditable notice, but in the meantime suggests that plan sponsors simply remove the statement from the model notice.