Product innovation: Wellness

The challenge

A sustainable healthcare system will require more than incremental cost reductions. It will require rethinking how we spend healthcare dollars. All healthcare stakeholders now accept the proposition that people are better served by a multifaceted health plan that helps them maintain their health rather than one that focuses on treating their chronic illnesses. Keeping members healthier, a worthwhile end in itself, is also good business. Good for employers because healthy employees are more productive, have fewer absences and retain their jobs longer. Good for payers because healthier members cost less to insure.

During the past few decades, employers and payers have invested in wellness programs, with mixed results. Fragmented and uncoordinated wellness initiatives have failed to produce cost reductions or healthier patients. These mistakes have taught the industry what works and what doesn't, and what works is a coherent wellness strategy integrated into a continuum of care.

How we can help you

You need to develop wellness strategies that address the specific health issues of targeted populations. We can help you devise and implement benefit programs that educate and motivate members toward healthier behavior. We can collect and analyze population data to create a membership profile that shows the disease states and risky health behaviors that a wellness strategy will need to address.

You need to incorporate wellness initiatives into an overall health-management program. We can assess the effectiveness of your current health and wellness programs, identify gaps and help you integrate profitable wellness initiatives into a continuum of care.

Common services include:

• Determining incentive and communication strategies
• Defining measurable goals for short- and long-term success
• Specifying the desired characteristics of programs, approaches and incentives
• Analyzing process and outcome measures to optimize benefit design for healthier outcomes and cost-effectiveness