Baseline Medical

Employer Moves To Results-Based Wellness Program

Talk to Bob Brown, a senior credit analyst at BrickStreet Mutual Insurance Co., and he will tell you it is immensely helpful to have an employer that encourages healthy lifestyles.

Brown has been assisted in his successful quest to lose weight by BrickStreet's results-based wellness program and the supportive attitude of co-workers and top management.

Terri McCormick, BrickStreet's director of human resources, said the company spent its first several years in start-up mode. BrickStreet was created in 2006 when West Virginia privatized its workers' compensation insurance system. As for employee wellness, "It seemed we could never get to it," she said.

But around 2009, "we said we need to sit down and talk about this," she said. "We put together a three-year plan."

First step

The first step was examining what was and was not working at other companies. Commercial Insurance, BrickStreet's agent for medical and other insurance benefits, suggested BrickStreet consider partnering with Bravo Wellness, a Cleveland, Ohio-based provider of wellness programs.

McCormick and her colleagues, Human Resource Specialist Kim Lanham and Human Resources Associate and Wellness Coordinator Christina Townson, went to Greg Burton, BrickStreet's president and chief executive officer, to pitch the need for a wellness program.

"I said I think there's some work that needs to be done around here for two reasons," McCormick recalled. "First, we want to keep employees healthy. To do that we think the accountability resides with them because, from a larger picture, we're trying to build a culture of accountability with our Brickstreet 360 service concept and this aligned with that really well.

"Secondly, of course medical costs continue to burgeon and we had the Affordable Care Act coming up at the time. Every way I looked at it, it seemed it was what we needed to do."

BrickStreet decided to partner with Bravo Wellness, which serves as the program's record keeper. Bravo conducts health risk assessments and biometric lab screenings designed to identify past, current and potential medical problems. Results are shared with each individual participant on a confidential basis and include recommendations on how to reduce risk factors. BrickStreet management receives aggregate health reports on the company and does not receive individual health records.

Wellness efforts

In addition to having management's whole-hearted support and hiring Bravo, wellness efforts included the construction of a fitness center and a robust slate of programs that range from help with tobacco cessation to ongoing Zumba classes, a "Team Step and Fitness Challenge," a "Maintain, Don't Gain" program (designed to help people get through the holidays without gaining weight) and a number of quick events such as an annual "Smoothie Stroll."

Participants in the Smoothie Stroll meet and walk around Charleston Town Center, then walk to Panera Bread to pick up their pre-ordered, healthy smoothies.

McCormick said BrickStreet launched its program with a year-long period during which the health risk assessment and lab screening were introduced on a voluntary basis. The risk assessment consisted of BrickStreet employees going to Bravo's website, bravowell.com, and answering questions about topics such as nicotine use. The lab screening checked key factors such as cholesterol, glucose and blood pressure.

"We had a comprehensive communications plan consisting of periodic weekly messages, mailings, employee-wide emails, flyers - you name it," McCormick said. "We did the multi-media campaign for a year, introducing people to results-based wellness and letting people know that in 2013 we would start tying the results of their screening to their benefits."

BrickStreet has almost 400 full-time-equivalent employees. All are eligible to participate in the health risk assessment, lab screening and wellness activities, even if they are not on BrickStreet's medical plan.

Seeing success

McCormick said 320 to 330 employees do participate in the company's medical plan. Of that number, 251 participated in both the health risk assessment and lab screening in 2012.

The company received aggregate results for body mass index, blood pressure, total cholesterol, blood glucose and tobacco use. Bravo reported that based on the results, BrickStreet had a higher obesity rate than comparison groups.

"This stands out as an opportunity to improve the organization's health," Bravo said in a presentation that was shared with employees. "Since obesity has been tied to higher health care expense, weight loss could have a positive influence on the company's performance.

In 2013, the first year BrickStreet tied employee medical premiums to a point structure based on health screenings, "we set what we felt were very generous goals," McCormick said. "Our benchmark was the National Institute of Health's goals for these categories.

"We saw some pretty significant outcomes. Our employee participants lost a total of 977 pounds. The number of people in the hypertension range went from 25 or 26 in the first, voluntary, year, to about 16 in 2013. You could say that's a coincidence. I don't think it was."

The 2013 lab results showed that of the people taking part in both 2012 and 2013, three people quit smoking and one person started.

The wellness program was voluntary for employee spouses in 2013 and is voluntary this year but in 2015, "in order to be eligible for a lower medical premium, your spouse will have to participate," McCormick said. "The reason that's important is if you don't have a spouse on board with you, it's really hard to eat right and exercise and all of those things when you are at home.

"Let's say an employee and spouse don't participate. They'll pay the highest premium there is. If just the employee participates, they'll pay a higher premium than if the spouse participates too. If both the employee and spouse participate, that's a lower premium still - and that lower premium becomes what we call our benchmark."

There are five other premium levels associated with the outcome of the health assessment and results from the lab screening.

It's complex, and the differences can amount to hundreds - even thousands - of dollars a year, which is why "we've done a huge amount of education and communications," McCormick said. "And we had Bravo come in and talk to our employees in July. The employees understand it.

"Our biggest concern going into this was that there would be major pushback from employees," McCormick said. "We've had a few concerns - people asking, 'What about body mass indexing?' and all kinds of specific, technical-type questions but as far as cultural pushback from employees, we haven't seen that. We've seen employees embracing this and taking accountability for their health."

Investing in employees

The annual health screening at BrickStreet will be performed before the end of September.

"By late October or early November we'll have the aggregate results for this year," McCormick said. "We're really anxious to start looking at that information and relating it to our medical claims costs.

"That's where the rubber meets the road from a dollar standpoint.

McCormick said BrickStreet is investing $52,000 a year in the program, or about $125 per employee per year.

"We think that's a nominal cost compared to the benefit our employees are reaping," she said. "We're happy we have healthier employees. That was one of our chief aims.

"We want to do this for the right reason, so even if we don't save a buck on our medical costs, we still want to do it because it is the right thing for our employees. But golly it sure would be nice if we can see a reduction in our medical costs too. In my book, if you can save one serious claim you've paid for it."

Source: George Hohmann,www.statejournal.com

Baseline Medical enjoys bringing hospital quality state-of-the-art vascular ultrasound into the workplace and health care office. Working with business owners, medical providers and human resources, employees and patients have an opportunity to participate in proactive measures for their health. Employers see the merit in protecting their staff and professionals protecting their patients by having an event onsite for heart disease and stroke risk instead of enduring heart attacks and "brain drains".