The WellRight Blog

Health care is expensive.

And with the payment models currently in place, it’s not going to get any cheaper. In fact, health care analysts are expecting the annual cost per employee to reach $15,000. That’s enough to make any CEO spit out their coffee, no matter their business size.

But there’s hope on the horizon. A new approach to managing patient care and reimbursement—called value-based care—could be the key to making health care more affordable and more effective. Even better, your corporate wellness platform is already laying the groundwork for value-based care, shortening your runway to better health care and more manageable costs.

“Nurses see the world in its most raw, inexplicable, unfair form of reality and somehow, by the grace of their inherent hope for humanity and unmeasurable depth of courage, still love it.” – Danielle Leveck, @nurseabnormalities

Burnout among nurses is at an all-time high.

The pandemic escalated an already tenuous situation—so much so that nearly a third of health care workers have been rethinking their choice of profession.

“Our health plan doesn’t offer an effective employee wellness program.”

If your members are saying that about you, first of all, you’re not alone: Many health plans haven’t invested in a wellness platform or programming for their employer groups.

But, there are plenty of reasons why they should.

If you’re looking for an added benefit to offer your employer clients, employee wellness programs are a solid investment and an invaluable asset. Not only do they give you a more thorough and holistic view of your member population, they help drive engagement and promote healthier, happier employees. That’s something that your employer clients will definitely see as a selling point.

Let’s look at the challenges employee wellness programs can solve for health plans and their employer clients.

You already know how a workplace wellness program can benefit your company and why more employee engagement creates a happier, healthier workforce. Where you may be struggling, however, is in the execution. It’s tough to make organizational changes when your team is overtasked, inexperienced, or just unable to find more hours in the work week.

We get it. Wellness program management is one of the biggest challenges our clients share with us when we help them create their workplace wellness programs. They often struggle with not enough expertise, not enough bandwidth … or even both.

Let’s get real for a moment: launching, maintaining, and growing a successful wellness program isn’t easy. After all, you’re asking a group of people to do one of the hardest things for anybody to do: change their habits.

Whether you’re doing this by yourself or as part of your HR team, you may feel like you’re trying to move mountains, as you send out emails, put up posters, and do everything you can to create some momentum.

But what if you had a certified expert in your corner helping to ensure your success?

So many of us let our health goals fall by the wayside in 2020, and for understandable reasons. The pandemic has disrupted life in so many ways that it has been difficult to focus on making healthy choices. Plus, gyms and fitness classes have been off-limits for most of the past year.

It’s not surprising that America’s top New Year’s resolution for 2021 was “exercise more,” followed by “eat healthier.” (By comparison, 2020’s top resolution was “manage finances better.”) When it comes to wellness in 2021, Americans are itching to make up for lost time.

One way in which they’re doing this is by turning to wellness coaching.

Few things bring teams together and inspire individual achievement more than striving toward a shared goal—or overcoming a shared challenge. We all learned that lesson in 2020—but in 2021, your organization can apply the idea to something a bit more healthy, fun, and productive.

A company-wide employee wellness challenge that all employees participate in is one of the key best practices for implementing a successful wellness program.

Savvy health plan administrators know that member wellness programs can make a health plan more attractive by adding value for their members and employer groups while also reducing costs.

Wellness programs encourage healthy habits among members, which, in turn, can drive down healthcare spending—an especially enticing prospect to self-insured and experience-rated groups. Additionally, wellness programs have been shown to reduce absenteeism and presenteeism, boost productivity and creativity, and contribute to a desirable workplace culture.

Companies often evaluate their corporate wellness programs in terms of return on investment (ROI). It’s a simple calculation for these companies: For every dollar they spend on their wellness program, how much do they save on healthcare costs?