If rising healthcare costs have been difficult to manage in your organization, you're not alone. Many employers have had to reduce healthcare benefits and raise deductibles for employees to offset rising healthcare costs that topped $2.6 trillion last year. The cost for employer-sponsored health coverage has increased 113 percent in the last decade.
It's no secret that, your wellness program can be a critical tool for helping control your healthcare costs. An estimated 17 percent of all medical costs are linked to obesity, according to a study by the National Bureau of Economic Research. And about 68 percent of all adults in the United States are overweight or obese.
People who are overweight have an increased risk for type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, heart disease, stroke, gallstones, and sleep apnea. People who are obese are more likely to require knee or joint-replacement surgery than are people at a healthy weight. These are all chronic conditions that could require long-term care, medications, and hospital stays that drive up healthcare costs.
Take a look at the group reports from your HRA data. Chances are good that many of your participants could benefit from losing a few pounds. Use that information to develop interventions, wellness incentives, and other motivating programs to help them shed the excess weight. Try the following ideas:
- Provide healthy snacks at work.
- Add healthy food choices to vending machines.
- Organize a walking group and encourage participation.
- Host a healthy eating or cooking workshop.
- Hire a health coach to work with participants.
- Provide discounts to a local gym or fitness club.
- Host a meeting to describe the risk factors associated with obesity.
- Give participants a water bottle and encourage them to drink water instead of soda.
- Create an exercise or fitness challenge to walk, move, and exercise more.
- Host on-site exercise classes.
- Provide participants with tools to track their progress, weight loss, nutrition, and exercise activity.
- Recognize employees who lose weight at meetings and in company communications.
- Take groups of participants shopping and help them choose healthy foods.
- Educate participants on Body Mass Index, how to measure it, and what it means.
- Set a weight-loss goal for your organization. Track and post the results.
When you help your participants lose weight, everybody wins. You can improve the health of your organization and control your insurance costs at the same time.
