Digital digestive health program yields 15% savings in medical claims

Digestive disorders typically rank among an organization’s top five health care expenses, both because they affect 1 in 4 Americans and because so many symptoms and diseases fall into the digestive category that nearly 850 medical codes are required to cover them all. That adds up to a major direct cost for businesses, and it doesn’t even count indirect costs involving productivity losses and absenteeism caused by digestive ailments.

Early efforts to utilize digital health programs to address these challenges indicate that a comprehensive approach can help moderate both the financial and the human toll by significantly reducing digestive flare ups and associated medical claims.

One large nonprofit employer that implemented Vivante Health’s GIThrive, for example, realized a 15% reduction in digestive-related health care spend, a 70% self-reported positive impact on participants’ health, and an 89% improvement in participants’ overall wellbeing after a year, benefiting employees as well as the employer’s bottom line.

Fewer ER visits and inpatient admissions

Designed specifically as an employer-sponsored program, GIThrive combines gut bacteria analysis and trigger food identification with app-based personalized action plans, food diaries, educational materials, and 24/7 personal support from registered dietitians and health coaches backed by a team of gastroenterologists and other clinical professionals.

The study documenting the program’s 15% savings in digestive-related costs compared claims data for 470 participating employees against 1,880 non-participants for the year before and the year after program adoption. Users were matched with non-users based on gender, age category, presence of any GI disease, and health care cost.

After removing outliers with a total medical spend above $50,000 from both groups, the analysis revealed that the employer had reduced average per-person digestive-related health care costs from $5,556 to $4,715 – an average savings of more than $840 annually per member.

Pharmacy spend had actually increased because of medication adherence encouraged by the program’s health coaches and dietitians, but that was more than offset by a substantial drop in emergency room visits and inpatient admissions stemming from participants’ better management of their digestive symptoms.

As one participant says, “My gut is healing, and the support from my dietitian makes all the difference.”

Improved productivity and attendance

While the GIThrive study did not measure the program’s impact on employee productivity and absenteeism, other research clearly indicates that reducing GI disease flare ups and debilitating symptoms like nausea, constipation, diarrhea and abdominal pain can also help companies keep their workforce operating at peak capacity.

On the productivity front, for instance, nearly 87% of subjects in one study of patients with irritable bowel disease reported a decline in their ability to work at their usual level. Participants in another analysis estimated an average loss of six hours of normal work focus per week. And from a work attendance perspective, a survey of more than 3,200 people indicated that irritable bowel syndrome is responsible for an average of 24 missed days of work per year.

Overall, in addition, abdominal pain is the #1 reason for doctor’s appointments and emergency room visits, followed by nausea/vomiting and diarrhea/gastroenteritis – all potentially causing employees to miss work and contributing to the negative effects on work quality, output and team performance.

Related: How to manage employee absences in the wake of COVID-19

The benefits of digital digestive health programs also extend to employees who have never received a specific GI-related diagnosis. By requiring users to log food and symptoms daily, monitoring trends over time, and providing 24/7 access to a care team for live chats or phone meetings, digital health programs can frequently help undiagnosed participants alleviate the frequency and/or severity of their GI troubles and potentially guide them to seek medical help.

Given the high cost of digestive disease in terms of medical spend, absenteeism and lost productivity even when users report for work, digital digestive health solutions promise to pay major dividends to both employers and employees by enabling users to take control of their GI symptoms. Considering all of the effort that goes into hiring the best talent, this kind of program can help ensure that each employee will pull his or her weight regardless of their digestive health challenges.

Bill Snyder is CEO of Vivante Health, a digital health care company that is reinventing the way chronic conditions are managed.