Show Them The Money
Source: Oregon companies up the ante to encourage employees to make healthy lifestyle choices by Brent Hunsberger. The Oregonian. January 21, 2007
Monetary incentives (and disincentives) are being considered by more and more third party payers. Within the last two weeks alone, for example, two of this blog’s posts, Payment For Medication Compliance: Incentive or Bribe? and Monetary Incentives To Decrease Obesity, have directly addressed this issue. Moreover, cost-sharing, which can be viewed as cash incentives once removed, has accounted for three recent posts.1
The article featured today notes that workplace health and wellness, some of which have been in operation for many years, have had little effect on obesity and diabetes rates or on health insurance costs. Taking a more aggressive stance, a small number of Oregon employers have joined forces with Regence BlueCross Blue Shield of Oregon to offer cash incentives to persuade workers to eat better, lose weight, exercise regularly and monitor their health.
The program, tested on Regence’s own employees the past two years, gives workers points for exercising, reading health education materials and joining weight- and smoking-cessation programs – points that can be redeemed for gift certificates or other prizes.2
Other employers are offering similar perks on their own. More than 100 mostly salaried employees at Roseburg Forest Products Co. who last year met certain exercise, weight and health-management goals — without smoking — will get, on average, a $419 bonus in their paychecks next month, representing a 10 percent rebate on the cost of the timber company’s annual cost to insure an individual. And some employers, liking what they’ve seen, are expanding incentive programs to include workers’ family members. Portland-based Stimson Lumber Co. recently extended its wellness program, dubbed StimWell, to workers’ spouses, refunding their monthly insurance premiums and offering free “accelerometers” to track the frequency and intensity of their exercise.
But there’s a clinker:
Nonetheless, Regence has been sufficiently impressed by the involvement of its employees to extend the program by offering, for example, healthful food in its cafeteria at heavily discounted rates.
Commentary
It’s noteworthy that the enthusiasm and interest in health improvement shown by Regence’s own employees, which seems a key factor in the company’s decision to vigorously promote the program, may well depend reflect a the impact of the company’s social networks as well as the cash incentive.
In addition, Regence appears to be shifting their programmatic concept from an early focus on a few goals, such as weight loss, to a more extensive system that covers more areas of healthy living and offers more options to those outside the mainstream.
My point? Not only is research necessary to discover if these systems have a positive effect on health and healthcare savings but work is also needed to determine what factors motivate employees to take advantage of these programs.
- Cost-sharing and Adherence To Prescribed Medication, Healthcare Cost-sharing And Medication Compliance, and More On Cost-sharing And Medication Compliance↩
- For example, employees receive 500 points for enrolling in exercise competitions and 2,000 for completing them. At 10,000 points, workers get a $50 gift certificate through Hallmark Insights to one of 100 retailers of their choosing, including Lowe’s and Target. Company officials say the incentives, so far, have worked. Nearly half of its work force joined some sort of rewards-incentive program, said Denise Johnson, Regence’s human resources director for benefits. It doled out nearly 6,500 gift cards last year (it caps at five the number of gift cards an individual can get in a year). And summer game participation increased from 500 in 2004 to 1,700 in 2006.↩