Employee Health and Wellness

Small and large employers carry a significant proportion of the provision of health care for families in this country by providing healthcare insurance for their employees. With the escalating increase in healthcare cost many employers are attempting to slow the increase of healthcare insurance premiums by providing innovative cost control initiatives. Greater emphasis is being put on primary prevention to keep employees healthy and secondary prevention to identify and treat health conditions before they can become serious.

At some workplaces, employees are being encouraged to take greater responsibility for their health related behaviors through risk rated incentive packages. Linking wellness to worker benefits of gain sharing and co-payment cost reductions will provide new opportunities requiring efforts of collaboration between the human resource managers and the Employee Health Promotion Program specialists. These two sets of experts may also work together for the ongoing evaluation of cost effective Employee Health Promotion Programs.

In conjunction with the above initiatives most large employers also have a nurse or physician on staff to dispense on-site medical and preventive care. Some initiatives have also found it cost effective to provide their own physical therapy programming to assist injured and infirm workers in regaining optimal functioning. A broad-based selection of health related worker services and benefits would include the following:

• Free or low cost health screenings provided on site by employer clinical personnel or through outside contractors:
Serum cholesterol
Colorectal cancer testing
Blood pressure testing
Mammography
Vision and hearing testing
Diabetes
• Referral procedures (e.g., Hypertension, Cholesterol, Cancer)
• First Aid and emergency care
• Disease control and prevention initiatives
• Child and infirm adult care services
• Financial and Pre-Retirement planning
• Ongoing learning/educational opportunities
• Coordination of employer picnics and outings
• Parent-child work visitation initiatives
• Workers compensation/rehabilitation