Offering Incentives for Health & Wellness Programs
Health and wellness programs can do wonders in reducing healthcare costs and increasing productivity for any organization — as long as individuals enroll and participate. As more healthcare organizations use rewards and incentives to drive participation and engagement in health improvement programs, HIN asked over 200 healthcare professionals to share their organization’s experiences with health incentives and rewards.
To download this complimentary white paper, please visit:
http://hin.com/library/registerhwincent.html
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U.S. Could Save 100,000 Lives a Year with 5 Basic Preventive Services
As Congress tackles health reform, a new public education campaign notes that more than 100,000 lives could be saved every year by investing in five basic preventive services: aspirin counseling, tobacco cessation counseling, adult influenza immunization, colorectal screening and breast cancer screening. An estimated 45,000 deaths would be prevented each year if people who could benefit were advised by their doctors to take a daily dose of aspirin to prevent heart disease and 42,000 lives that could be saved a year if doctors offered tobacco cessation counseling.
A number of obstacles — including lack of coverage as well as co-pay and deductible requirements — currently discourage doctors from providing these services and also discourage many patients from obtaining them, according to Robert Gould, Ph.D., president of Partnership for Prevention and a behavioral scientist who was an architect of the highly successful “truth” anti-tobacco marketing campaign. “As a result, these services are under-utilized, needlessly placing people at risk.”
Partnership for Prevention is urging Congress to provide coverage for high-value preventive services in all federal health plans, to encourage it in all private plans and to remove deductibles and copays. Dr. Gould notes that three of the five services — aspirin counseling, tobacco cessation counseling and adult flu immunization — actually save money, while the other two services are highly cost-effective.
To learn more about this research, please visit:
http://www.prevent.org/images/stories/2009/100k%20lives%20press%20release%20_2_.pdf
.
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Healthcare Trends Mid-2009
Healthcare organizations are recalibrating business plans and priorities mid-year in response to the recession, pending healthcare reform efforts, federal stimulus funds for health IT and state Medicaid programs and rising unemployment. Find out how other healthcare organizations are reacting to the current financial, legislative and reimbursement environment by completing HIN's Survey of the Month on Healthcare Trends in 2009: Mid-Year Adjustment by June 30. You’ll get a free executive summary of the compiled results. Your responses will be kept strictly confidential.
To participate in this survey and receive its results, please visit:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/...
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Screening adults for diabetes could result in significant cost savings for healthcare systems compared to the costs of not screening individuals at all. Researchers at Emory University screened 1,259 adults who had never been diagnosed with diabetes. The volunteer participants underwent four screening tests, including random plasma and capillary glucose and a 50g oral glucose challenge test (without a prior fast, at different times of the day) with plasma and capillary glucose measured one hour after the glucose drink. All participants also had a definitive 75g oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT) performed in the morning after an overnight fast.
Daily contact with participants in self-care health monitoring programs is one way healthcare organizations can improve patient engagement rates, explains Pharos Innovations CEO Dr. Randall Williams. In his work with Medicaid beneficiaries with chronic illnesses, he has observed that participants identified for health improvement programs are very receptive to daily contact and highly engaged in the process.
