Junk food is no longer welcomed at the Hatcher Agency.
Greg Hatcher, owner of the Little Rock insurance firm, said his company had undergone radical changes to improve its health since it started a wellness program in the fall.
Some of the changes include adding a gym to the office and making sure healthy meals are ordered for lunch. Changes are being made outside the office, too. Employees who once sent clients cookies and doughnuts now are saying “thank you” with pretzels and animal crackers.
Hatcher gives the credit to the company’s wellness coach, Communit-Y Health Network of Cartersville, Ga.
Hatcher’s company is a sales agent for CHN, but he has found the program a difficult sell because executives don’t believe it will work.
“I never believed in any [wellness program], nor has anybody else,” Hatcher said.
But Hatcher said he was a believer in CHN’s program because its coaches meet weekly with Hatcher’s employees to keep them on a healthy track.
He said the cost of $35 per month for each of its 45 employees will pay for itself in lower absenteeism, lower rates for worker compensation and insurance.
He said he had no plans to end the program. “Health has got to be permanent,” Hatcher said.
The Hatcher Agency and other firms in Arkansas are using wellness programs to help their employees lose weight, stop smoking and lower their cholesterol.
The question is, though: Do wellness programs work?
The answer: It depends on the program, said Catherine Fillmore, project manager of the University of Michigan Health Management Research Center.
“Programs that are more intensive tend to have more success,” she said. “Programs that are fairly low effort from the employer don’t see as much of an impact.”
Jayme Mayo, the wellness director for Nabholz Construction of Conway, said she had seen some improvement in the health of the company’s nearly 1,000 employees since it started its wellness program in 2007.
The company instituted its wellness program in an attempt to control health insurance claims.
“They were continually climbing,” she said. Nabholz, which is self-insured, offers health insurance at no cost to its employees. As a result of the program and “luck,” claim costs have remained relatively stable, Mayo said.
To get insurance at no cost, employees have to participate in the wellness program, which involves undergoing either a physical from a doctor or health risk assessments through the company, Mayo said.
About 950 employees take part in the program and could earn up to $300 annually in gift cards if they improve their health by doing such things as lowering their cholesterol levels and shedding pounds.
And she’s found that the program has been working in some areas.
The number of employees with high cholesterol is now at 14 percent, down from 25 percent in 2007. Originally, 40 percent of the employees had high blood pressure, and that number now stands at 22 percent.
But obesity and smoking continue to be a challenge for Nabholz, she said. In those areas, little improvement has been made since 2007. Mayo said she thinks that high cholesterol and high blood pressure can be improved by taking a pill, while weight loss and smoking require more of an effort from the employee.
Mayo said Nabholz was considering making changes to its wellness incentive program next month, but declined to say what those changes would be.
Successful Programs
Fillmore, of the University of Michigan, said a successful wellness program should start with a health risk assessment of the employees.
The employer should receive an aggregate report on the health of a company’s workforce, and the program should be tailored to address those health risks.
The workers should be given the results of their biometrics test so they know their blood pressure, weight and cholesterol levels.
Employers also should look at their policies to see whether they are contributing to the problem. If they want employees to stop smoking, they shouldn’t allow smoking on their grounds, Fillmore said.
Fillmore said she sees companies offer financial incentives for the wrong behaviors. She said companies should reward employees who maintain a healthy weight or don’t smoke with lower insurance premiums, for example. Instead, companies offer rewards to people who stop smoking or lose weight.
Employees “tend to backslide,” she said. And the weight loss could be temporary for when a company holds a “Biggest Loser” type contest.
“The same people always win them,” Fillmore said. “They’re the people who end up losing the same 25 pounds a year.”
She said weight loss was difficult for people to maintain and companies should focus on the employee’s long-term health. She said the wellness program has to be every day of the year and not just for a season.
A successful program might include giving employees $10 a month if they don’t gain weight, Fillmore said.
Baptist Health
Baptist Health of Little Rock contracted with Communit-Y Health Network in the fall and has already had some employees reporting weight loss, said Tony Kendall, vice president of human resources for Baptist Health.
“We have been interested in trying to help our employees stay healthy,” Kendall said. “We think it’s good for them and also good for Baptist.”
Kendall declined to provide the price tag on the three-year contract with CHN.
About 3,000 Baptist Health employees at its Little Rock campus are going through the wellness program. And for participating, they will receive about a 5 percent savings on their health insurance premium. Baptist Health has about 7,600 employees, but the program is open only to employees in Little Rock at this time, Kendall said.
The employees undergo voluntary health assessment risk tests. Baptist Health only receives the aggregate data and doesn’t know individual performances, Kendall said.
Employees who are considered high risk can make arrangements to see the CHN coaches weekly; the coaches have offices on Baptist Health Little Rock’s campus.
Kendall said he didn’t know if Baptist would see overall medical costs drop.
“It helps all of us to have our employees to be as healthy as possible,” he said. “And anything we do to reduce the health risk, we ought to try to do it.”
Measurements
Christine Ferguson, director of the Arkansas Children’s Hospital wellness program, said ACH started its wellness program in 2007.
If employees undergo an annual health risk assessment, $200 is knocked off their health insurance premium. She said about 2,800 of Children’s 4,200 employees go through the program. Employees also can earn up to $100 annually if they meet their health goals.
Ferguson said that it was difficult to measure, however, if productivity improved or if absenteeism declined as a result of the wellness program.
“We are still fine tuning how we measure that,” she said. “We do find that 95 percent of the time our employees are here and productive.”
Even with the wellness programs and a gym at ACH, however, ACH employees have higher obesity rates than state and national averages, Ferguson said.
In 2011, only 29 percent of ACH employees had a body mass index score of less than 24, which is considered healthy. The body mass index, or BMI, is calculated using a person’s weight and height. In Arkansas, 33 percent of the population had a BMI of less than 24, and 36 percent of the nation had a BMI score of less than 24, she said.
“We are just like the rest of America, and have problems with weight, proper nutrition and finding time for exercise,” Ferguson said.
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