Winning The Chronic Disease Battle

Every year 1.7 million Americans die from a chronic disease—accounting for 7 out of every 10 deaths in our country and making them the number one cause of death and disability in the nation.

According to David Katz, M.D., director of the Yale University Prevention Research Center, we need to focus on three key areas in order to improve health. He stresses that what we do with our fork, feet and fingers determines what we do to our future health. In short, eating well, keeping fit and avoiding smoking are the three major contributors to our health. 

Experience over the past seven years with implementing wellness programs for more than 12,200 employees has strengthened my belief that the workplace is one of the best places to transform health and lessen the impact of chronic disease. Employers must implement comprehensive wellness programs, offer tailored programs for employees with chronic conditions and link benefits to behavior in order to turn the tide on our country’s epidemic of chronic illness and to lower health care costs.

Following Dr. Katz’s simple but powerful “fork, feet and fingers” directive, employers need to create work environments that offer healthy food choices, create opportunities for employees to keep active and offer smoking cessation programs as needed. Today’s “well” workplaces offer nutritious cafeteria choices, weight loss reduction programs, fitness challenges, onsite gyms or gym memberships, walking trails, walking workstations, sit-stand desks, smoking cessation programs and more. 

Knowledge is power, so leading employers also offer employees annual opportunities to learn biometric numbers like blood pressure, blood glucose and cholesterol, as well as confidential personal health assessments. Personalized, confidential online portals can give employees access to health resources including exercise and nutrition planners, health coaching and wellness challenges. 

Chronic diseases like hypertension, diabetes, asthma and depression are responsible for more than 75% of healthcare costs. Employers must help address these conditions if we wish to lower healthcare expenses. Through health programs partnering with employees with chronic conditions such as high blood pressure, diabetes and hyperlipidemia, we can help individuals make long-lasting lifestyle changes, lessen complications, improve outcomes and lower medical and pharmaceutical costs.

At MemorialCare, we implemented a year-long, voluntary program, called The Good Life - In Balance, which partners with employees diagnosed with diabetes, hypertension and high cholesterol. The program has led to clinically significant improvements in participants’ blood glucose and blood pressure levels. 

Employers must link benefits to behavior to create medical insurance plans that are financially sustainable for families and for our organizations. Following the launch of a redesigned benefits program in 2013, more than half our employees took the steps needed to qualify for lower cost plans by participating in wellness related activities, and completing a confidential personal health assessment and biometric screening.

A recent nationwide survey conducted by Mercer revealed the national average increase in the employer-sponsored healthcare spending rate was 8.5% per year over the past five years. Experience shows that it’s possible to bend that cost curve with a combination of wellness programs, linking behavior to benefit design, and strong rate negotiations—without passing increased costs onto the employee. Normalized for one year, when we experienced several outlier cases, MemorialCare’s average rate increase over five years was 3.5% annually, just above the annual consumer price index. 

Employers across the nation have the opportunity, challenge and responsibility to implement workplace wellness solutions that can improve employee health and well-being, increase employee engagement and help lower health care costs. In order to take US workplaces well beyond chronic illness, leading employers must take this challenge to transform our work cultures.  

Tammie Brailsford is executive vice president and chief operations officer for the MemorialCare Health System. She is a member of the Payers & Providers editorial board.