“Wellness programmes offered either inside the company or through the medical scheme is area being explored to control costs,” said Lydia Footman, Risk Manager at Old Mutual Healthcare (OMHc).
“With the emphasis on the bottom line, they are starting to look at alternative interventions that will impact positively on the health of their employees and on the balance sheet. While continuing to shift more of the curative healthcare costs to their staff, employers are prepared to subsidise preventative initiatives.”
She said the Old Mutual 2003 Healthcare Survey found that employee wellness programmes were particularly prevalent among larger companies with more than 5 000 employees, with the majority surveyed paying the total cost towards the provision of such a programme.
“Also indicative of the trend towards employer initiatives intended to cut curative costs is that 50% in the closed schemes market and 30% in open schemes offer a corporate health screening programme. Of the employers who offer healthcare screening programmes, 44% believe their programme to be sufficiently proactive to provide early detection of certain conditions, thereby preventing costly procedures and lost productivity,” said Footman.
In terms of offering employees rewards for participating in wellness programmes, 65% of companies regarded rewards as important incentives to drive employee involvement. Rewards suggested include airline discounts, points converted to buying power, discounts on gym membership and even a discount in medical scheme contributions.
Among the corporate wellness initiatives employers intend implementing over the next five years are improved health education and awareness, wellness programmes, in-house fitness facilities and comprehensive counselling.
According to Footman the opportunity to influence the health and wellness of a workforce is likely to be a key issue for employers and may shift the emphasis from curative to preventative healthcare. This will, in turn, place a focus on health risk management as a means to address the financial risk management of providing employee healthcare.
“Should wellness programmes demonstrate significant cost savings, either through reduced medical scheme contributions or improved productivity, it’s likely that the pace of implementation will increase,” she concluded.