Health Management Challenge

Maxine is a human resources benefits consultant for a large national company. She is looking for a premier health management vendor who can integrate with her company’s disease management and nurseline vendor to provide a population health management solution.

Approach

StayWell Health Management worked with the client to develop a population health management solution that will ultimately improve their employees’ health, assist in managing medical costs, positively reduce  absenteeism, and improve productivity.

StayWell health Management recommended the following program:

• a modest incentive of reduced employee healthcare contributions to encourage employees to participate in a health assessment (HA.) 
• A significant promotion/communication program with
• • Integration of disease, nurseline and health management program
  • communications using existing client communication channels and events
  • Client branding
    An integrated, custom, four-color introductory brochure mailed to employees’ homes
  • An integrated program announcement letter to managers/supervisors
  • An e-mail communication campaign
    
    
• Administration of StayWell’s HealthPath® HA delivered primarily through online delivery with a paper HA backup for individual requests.
• An aggregate management summary report following the administration of the HA.
• Employee access to the StayWell Online® suite which, in addition to the online HealthPath® HA , contains links to the other vendors’ online resources,  a wellness magazine, the HealthDay® daily news feed, self-care resources, and information on over 1,600 health and wellness topics.
• Employee access to an integrated phone tree, which would include StayWell’s toll-free HelpLine for assistance with HA completion, forgotten passwords, post-intervention support, or other program issues.
• The StayWell NextSteps® Health care Consumerism program, to be available to employees most likely to generate the majority of future health care costs  (as determined by StayWell’s proprietary Utilization Prediction Model). 
• Specific intervention programs – such as programs for diabetes management or weight control -  for individuals shown to be at high- or medium-risk levels. Invitations to be extended to high-risk individuals through the NextSteps® Phone-Based Focused Intervention for high-risk individuals and to moderate-risk individuals through the NextSteps® Mail-Based or Web-based Focused Intervention
• Participation data is shared between vendors. Employees were self-referred to other vendor programs based on the needs of the individual
• An annual HA to assess and reinforce successful changes.
• One employee wellness campaign a year, offered on a topic based on the outcomes of the HA Management Summary.  The campaign provided a highly visible activity with wide appeal to help low-risk participants stay in the low-risk category and to support behavior change for high-risk individuals.

Results

StayWell Health Management monitored the progress and success of the program through process, impact and outcome measures.  At the end of Year 1, StayWell found a 16% improvement in health risks among the high-risk members (1 or more high risks) who had participated in StayWell’s NextSteps phone-based lifestyle intervention. Return on investement after Year 1 was 1.5:1 ($1.50 saved for every $1.00 spent.)