Wellness centers are becoming profit centers for U.S. hospitals.
The centers, generally associated with corporate health insurance plans, had been adopted by a handful of hospitals that wanted to position themselves as on the cutting edge. But now, says Healthcare Finance magazine, wellness centers are catching on with hospitals for two financial reasons: return on investment, and reduced medical care costs for patients and staff.
The article, "Wellness centers, no long hospital gimmicks, become money-making population health engines," cites a recent study that estimates adding a wellness center to a hospital's operations nets an ROI of 6 percent to 10 percent. In addition, the centers are designed to serve staff, patients and outside "customers," who pay to use the centers and, in theory, contribute to a hospital's efforts to demonstrate better health care results for the population it serves.
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Such centers aren't trying to compete with the local fitness center, the article said, but instead are staffed by personnel with medical and exercise physiology training to dig deeper into users' health than would most fitness centers.
"We provide many services that the $10 a month gym doesn't," Scott Kashman, chief administrative officer for Cape Coral Hospital in Florida, told Healthcare Finance. "We can look at health risk factors and are well-trained to provide a program to help mitigate those risks. We also assess everyone annually to follow changes and provide accountability."
The ROI range (6-10 percent) may not be up to Warren Buffet's standards; the wellness centers located within a hospital complex by definition are spending much more on staff and equipment infused with medical technology, the article said.
But the subtler benefit of contributing to the overall health of the population served by focusing on prevention rather than treatment addresses the trend toward evaluating health care centers based upon population health and outcomes "in the era of quality over quantity of care," the article said.
"The wave of the future is to focus less on illness and more on prevention and wellness," Joan Phillips, vice president of Clinical Services at Beaumont Health in Troy, Michigan, told the magazine. "Our community and our employees want and need a place to focus on both fitness and wellness."
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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.
