What Health Vendors Are Not Telling You.
The organizations with the most cost-efficient healthcare plans are the ones that streamline the services workers receive for both their physical and psychological health.
As a long-term goal, having your general health plan, worker assistance program (EAP) and health promotion program communicating regularly with one another about employees’ treatments is the single best way to reduce redundant or contradictory treatments, eliminate unnecessary claims and enhance the quality of the plans for which you pay.
Let’s look at the relationship between your health promotion program and your employee assistance program to illustrate the importance of attacking medical costs cross a broad front.
You can begin a health promotion program with a health risk appraisal and then, when appropriate, roll out a smoking cessation program or a losing weight program.
But ultimately you want to make certain that your wellness vendor works along with your EAP vendor.
Here’s why – It’s very common for an worker to contact the employee assistance program (EAP) because the person feels depressed about his or her weight. What you want is for the employee assistance program (EAP) vendor to treat the employee’s depression and behavioral issues, plus you want the employee assistance program (EAP) to refer the worker to the health promotion program to deal with the root cause of the problem – obesity.
The same thing accompanies the relationship your wellness program and your workers’ comp vendor, STD and LTD vendors, rehab people , and/or disease managers. You want all them talking to – and sharing data with – each other. If they’re not, it’s costing you money.
In general, the businesss who achieve the greatest cost savings through their wellness programs are the ones who overlap wellness with behavioral and occupational health issues.