One of the most accepted screenings and perhaps most unnecessary, suggests Dr. Ateev Mehrotra, a health policy researcher at Harvard Medical School and the RAND Corp., is the annual checkup.

In otherwise healthy individuals, it's a waste patient and physician time, he believes, hurts productivity, costs money, and has the potential to create real medical problems when tests and biopsies are ordered to refute false positives.

For healthy individuals, few screenings need to be done every year, an increasing number of experts are beginning to advise.

Sooner or later, though, a wellness vendor will have to selected.

Consultant John Bates, writing on the blog WellnessProposals.com, suggests asking some of the following questions:

• What methods are used to reduce health risks and have they been used by other companies? If so, how many?
• Is there any testimonial data from previous companies to support the use of the proposed corporate wellness company system?
• Does the company offer complimentary wellness resources?
• What kind of ongoing measurement do they advocate and how do they monitor follow-up strategies?
• Do they have a method for ensuring referrals are completed?
• In what way can you determine that the program is successful?
• Do they list options for internal marketing of the program?
• Do they supply incentive ideas for participation and have data to support this?
• Do they offer any recruiting suggestions?