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“Wellness and Widgets"
by Paul McLeod, M.D., MED3OOO Chief Medical Executive
The following paragraph appeared in my local newspaper a few weeks ago:
“If you smoke or use tobacco products, don’t bother applying for a job with Escambia County, Florida government. Starting October 1, the county will have a tobacco-free hiring policy. All applicants for county jobs are currently required to take a drug test, which will be expanded to include testing for tobacco use. Any applicant testing positive for tobacco will not be eligible.”
The majority of healthcare costs in the United States are born by employers and the government (State and Federal). Controlling cost in healthcare must include interventions that facilitate healthy living among employees. More emphasis needs to be placed on health, in lieu of healthcare. Lifestyles that include use of tobacco products contribute to chronic illness, increased healthcare costs and reduced productivity which will erode profits. Changing those lifestyles produces a win-win situation. The patient stays healthier and the employer spends less money on healthcare.
What should employers do?
Changing plan design to increase co-pays, or put in larger deductibles may help to engage the patient in the healthcare process, but if the worker population is still sick, the net effect for the employer is just to move the cost around without providing a real fix.
Employers must take an active role in changing the focus of healthcare from “getting well” to “staying well”. According to a recent report by the National Business Group on Health, a non-profit organization, of mostly 300 large employers, 83 percent of employers offered health risk appraisals in 2008, an 18 percentage-point change since 2006. Research by Harvard Medical School’s Department of Healthcare Policy has shown that education programs and activities such as tracking logs, pedometers, and internal competition, can increase worker participation in wellness programs by at least 21 percent.
Pat Fulcher, Vice President of Associate Services at Food Lion LLC comments about employer based wellness initiatives. “If we didn’t do it as employers, if we were not there to truly show associates that they’re valued and what it means to us for them to be well, I’m not sure who would do the work, to motivate, to be innovative, to allow people to understand that their choices everyday affect their lives.”
MED3OOO employs more than 1500 talented individuals. We understand the challenges of providing a health insurance benefit from an employer’s perspective. We are also in the unique position to develop, deploy, and operate technology systems that support population health management and wellness programs essential to the long term success of employers and those businesses they represent. We are committed to providing employers with the information that they need to increase the productivity and quality of the lives of their employees.
Click here for a printed version: Clinical Newsletter September 2008
The Clinical Advisory is a clinical publication from MED3OOO dedicated to informing physicians and clinical staff about tools and information to improve the quality of patient care.
Corporate Headquarters: MED3OOO, Inc., 680 Andersen Drive, Foster Plaza 10, Pittsburgh PA 15220. For more information on our clinical initiatives visit www.MED3000.com or contact Geoff Coleman at Geoff_Coleman@MED3000.com or 1-888-811-2411.
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A 2007 federal law requires the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to disclose all its investigations into reports of possible drug-related adverse events. This month, the agency announced that it is evaluating new adverse-event reports for 20 drugs. The first new quarterly report identifies medications based on adverse events reported between January 1 and March 31, 2008, and comes from the FDA’s early-warning system for drugs already on the market. The Adverse Event Reporting System (AERS) collects reports from patients, hospitals, doctors and drug companies about suspicious problems that may possibly be related to a medication. Last year, over 480,000 unsolicited reports were received. The vast majority were false alarms, having nothing to do with the medication the patient was taking.
The report does not say how many people were affected by these possible drug reactions, or give any indication of the severity. “This extends our commitment to keep the public and the healthcare community informed of what we are evaluating,” stated Paul Seligman, MD, MPH, FDA Associate Director of Safety Policy and Communication, said at a news conference. “If a drug is listed, it means we have begun an analysis to see if there is a safety problem that requires further evaluation,” stated Gerald Dal Pan, MD, MPH, Director of the FDA Office of Surveillance and Epidemiology. “When that evaluation is done, the FDA will either issue further warnings, or an all-clear,” Dal Pan said.
In the meantime, the FDA advises that patients shouldn’t stop taking a drug just because it is on the list. Just because a drug is on the list doesn’t mean it isn’t safe, or even that it caused the suspected problem.
Tools
MedWatch
The FDA Safety Information and Adverse Event Reporting Program.
Health Data Management.com
HealthDataManagement.com is the leading source of Healthcare I.T. information on the Web. Each edition contains staff-written stories about the latest news in healthcare I.T., as well as information about additional resources and upcoming industry events.
Medline Plus
Trusted Health Information for You - A service of the U.S. National Library of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health
Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency.
An executive agency of the Department of Health.
This agency enhances and safeguards the health of the public by ensuring that medicines and medical devices work and are acceptably safe. No product is risk-free. Robust and fact-based judgements are used to ensure that the benefits to patients and the public justify the risks.
Using the M3/IQ™ technology and our M3/Connect technology, we can work with you to identify those patients in your practice who should be recalled for needed services. If you would like to discuss either these reports or an automated patient recall process using M3/Connect technology, please contact Geoff Coleman at Geoff_Coleman@MED3000.com.
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