Employers Underestimate Full Costs of Poor Health

Poor health among workers is far costlier to U.S. employers than they realize, impacting their profitability and undercutting the nation’s overall productivity, according to a major study published in the April 2009 Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine.

The large multi-year study indicates that when employers only focus on medical and pharmacy costs in creating employee health strategies they may misidentify the health conditions that most impact the productivity of their employees while underestimating the impact of other factors.

One such factor, "presenteeism," occurs when employees with health conditions are present at their jobs but are unable to perform at full capacity. The study closely examined the effects of presenteeism, concluding that impaired employee-performance typically creates a greater drain on a company's productivity than employee absence - a finding which could come as a surprise to some employers.

The study also found that when considering medical and drug costs alone, the top five conditions driving costs are cancer (other than skin cancer), back/neck pain, coronary heart disease, chronic pain, and high cholesterol. But when health-related productivity costs are measured along with medical and pharmacy costs, the top five chronic health conditions driving these overall health costs shift significantly to: depression, obesity, arthritis, back/neck pain and anxiety.

The study suggests that many employers miss an opportunity to improve productivity and their bottom-line results by failing to recognize and prioritize these health conditions when they develop integrated employee-health strategies and related interventions.

The study, coordinated by the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine (ACOEM), the Integrated Benefits Institute (IBI), and Alere LLC (formerly Matria Healthcare, Inc.) is one of the largest of its kind to date.

Other significant findings from the study include:

-- Health-related productivity costs are significantly greater than medical and pharmacy costs alone. On average, every $1 of medical and pharmacy costs is matched to $2.3 of health-related productivity costs.

-- Co-morbidities (employees with multiple chronic health conditions) -- drive the largest effects on productivity loss.

-- The impact of poor health on productivity impacts all levels of an enterprise including executives and managers.

To fully gauge health-related productivity costs, researchers measured medical and pharmacy spending along with lost-productivity costs related to absence and presenteeism. The study notes that employers have not historically assessed costs in this way, limiting themselves instead to a "siloed" approach that seeks to manage single health-cost categories, such as medical visits or pharmaceuticals, through benefit-package design. The wake-up call for U.S employers is that simply looking at the costs of specific medical conditions by adding up medical and pharmacy claims costs alone won't give a true picture of the full impact of poor health on the much greater costs of lost productivity in the workforce

A healthy workforce is critical to an employer's ability to compete in today's economy. Employers who understand the importance of balancing health care costs with quality of care and wellness/prevention initiatives will design better benefits packages for their employees. By recognizing these issues, employers can take steps toward improving employee health, productivity, and retention, as well as spend their health care dollars more effectively. The opportunity for employers is to look beyond healthcare benefits as a cost to be managed and rather to the benefits of good health as an investment to be leveraged. Ultimately, a healthier, more productive workforce can help drive a healthier economy.

The full article can be read in the April 2009 edition of the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine.

In response to our client’s interests in promoting employee health at an affordable rate, OHS-COMPCARE offers both on-site clinical facilities and access to urgent care. We have 30 years experience in developing and managing on-site medical departments uniquely designed to the employer’s specific interests. Our parent company has also opened Adult Quick Care providing urgent care for adolescents 14 and older. We have also expanded to retail medicine with Quick Care serving all ages 18 months an older. Please see below for the addresses and openings. We would be happy to provide informational brochures for you and your employees. We also offer preventive screening programs and lunch and learns all designed to help you guide your employees to being healthy, wiser healthcare consumers and more productive employees.

Adult Quick Care now has 6 locations to better serve your needs with plans to open 1 more facility in the near future.

Now Open

19000 E. Eastland Center Court, Independence MO Hours of Operation: Monday - Friday 8am - 10pm

1650 Broadway, Kansas City MO 64108 Hours of Operation: Monday-Friday 8am - 5pm

13830 S. US Highway 71, Grandview MO 64030 Hours of Operation: Monday-Friday 8am - 5pm

6501 Commerce, Kansas City MO 64120 Hours of Operation: Monday-Friday 8am - 5pm

10415 Lackman Road, Lenexa KS 66219 Hours of Operation: Monday-Friday 8am - 5pm

1333 Meadowlark Lane, Suite 200, Kansas City KS 66102 Hours of Operation: Monday-Friday 8am - 5pm

Opening Summer 2009

904 Edmond, St. Joseph MO 64501

To learn more about Adult Quick Care please call 816-559-6320 or visit www.adultquickcare.com.

***In addition, Adult Quick Care has opened a convenience care facility in Raymore, MO:

Quick Care - Conveniently located in Cosentino's Price Chopper next to the pharmacy

900 West Foxwood Drive, Raymore MO 64083 Hours of Operation: 9am - 7pm Monday-Friday & 11am - 5pm Saturday

Quick Care offers all the services of a typical convenience care facility plus minor injury care including minor laceration repair.

To learn more about Quick Care please call 816-322-3521 or visit www.quickcaremidwest.com.

*Please feel free to forward this information to any member of management in your company who would benefit from it.*

To view the Tip of the Week in Spanish please visit our Tip of the Week library at http://www.ohscompcare.com/totw/. Please allow a few days for the current Tip of the Week to be translated and placed in to the library.

To learn more about services OHS-COMPCARE has to offer, contact our Client Services Team at (816) 561-2105 option 1 or by e-mail at customerservice@ohscompcare.com. You can also visit us at www.ohscompcare.com.

Why choose us? Because OHS-COMPCARE is locally owned since 1979 with same ownership.

OHS-COMPCARE has seven (7) area clinical facilities:

Independence Clinical Facility	Johnson County Clinical Facility	St. Joseph Clinical Facility	Grandview Clinical Facility
19000 E. Eastland Center Crt, St. 200	10415 Lackman Road	904 Edmond Street	13830 S Us Highway 71
Independence, MO 64055	Lenexa, KS 66219	St. Joseph, MO 64501	Grandview, MO 64030
816-478-9299	913-495-9905	816-233-7702	816-761-4664
After Hours Available

KCMO/Broadway Clinical Facility	KCMO/Front Street Clinical Facility	Wyandotte County Clinical Facility
1650 Broadway	6501 East Commerce, Suite 110	1333 Meadowlark Lane, Suite 200
Kansas City, MO 64108	Kansas City, MO 64120	Kansas City, KS 66102
816-842-2020	816-483-5550	913-596-2774