Can the team approach to employee health succeed where individual appeals have fallen short? Kaiser Permanente and its unions are about to find out.
Kaiser has been experimenting with wellness initiatives designed to improve overall workforce health and contain medical coverage costs. Like many wellness plan users, Kaiser has set up plans that offer incentives to covered individuals who participate and show improvements in specific areas. Such incentive programs have met with varying degrees of success.
Kaiser was recently approached by union representatives with a different take on the incentives. What if worksites as a unit could pool their improvements in such areas as weight loss, smoking cessation, lower blood pressure, and other objectives commonly found in wellness plans?
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The result: Workers in Kaiser's 29 unions can now share in cash bonuses awarded to worker units rather than individuals. Even members of the group of don't lose weight, quit smoking, lower their BP, etc., get a cut of the bonus. Each person stands to receive up to $500 a year; Kaiser has estimated that the payout, to be calculated in 2015, could be in the neighborhood of $66.5 million.
Eligible are 133,000 employees and managers in eight states and the District of Columbia, union and nonunion. Not eligible: Kaiser doctors, dentists and executives.
Other details of the three-phase program, as reported in the Merced (CA) Sun Star:
- Phase one, workers must fill out a basic online health survey. If 75 percent complete it, each person in that region gets $150.
- Phase two, employees must update their baseline screenings for weight, smoking, cholesterol and blood pressure. If 85 percent do so, they each get $150.
- Phase three, by December 2014, if the group shows an average 1.7 percent improvement in smoking, weight, blood pressure and cholesterol, everyone gets $200.
Kaiser has already set a fast pace for all wellness programs. Its Northern California's Live Well Be Well workplace-wellness program has been gold certified by the National Business Group on Health.
The Live Well Be Well program, says the company, "offers more than 250 services aimed at promoting and enhancing the health and well-being of the region's 68,000 employees and 7,000 physicians. The program leverages Kaiser Permanente's clinical excellence and health-promotion expertise to provide both on-site and online services, which include everything from cholesterol and blood-pressure screening to cooking, weight-loss, exercise and smoking-cessation classes and programs."
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Dan Cook
Dan Cook is a journalist and communications consultant based in Portland, OR. During his journalism career he has been a reporter and editor for a variety of media companies, including American Lawyer Media, BusinessWeek, Newhouse Newspapers, Knight-Ridder, Time Inc., and Reuters. He specializes in health care and insurance related coverage for BenefitsPRO.
