Healthcare: When a Win-Win Is Lose-Lose

“Workplace Wellness Programs Are a Sham“ is a good article in Slate by L.V. Anderson. This is a must read for people who remain true believers that workplace wellness will improve worker health. “The idea behind wellness programs sounds like a win-win," Anderson writes. Alas, history is full of “win-win” ideas that were destructive, costly or ineffective. She describes the infamous “doublespeak” of Safeway CEO Stephen Burd’s description of success with Safeway’s wellness program. Anderson writes, “As it turns out, almost none of Burd’s story was true.” (Regular readers of my blog will know I’ve written about the Safeway nonsense before.) For decades, everyone knew that an annual physical was a great way to stay healthy, but various studies, including the famous New England Centenarian Study, have exposed that as a myth, too. See also: A Proposed Code of Conduct on Wellness   Antibacterial soap, anyone? Sounded like a great win-win, no? The FDA finally outlawed it. In my book, An Illustrated Guide to Personal Health, written in 2015 with UNLV Professor Robert Woods, Chapter 4 was titled, “Avoid Antibacterial Soaps and Gels.” Why? “Overuse of antibacterial soaps and gels can reduce the effectiveness of antibiotics you may need someday…. They are helping create antibiotic-resistant germs.” Back to wellness failures. Companies in the U.S. have spent huge dollars trying to keep employees healthy through methods that are shams. It’s time to move on. I immodestly include the following quote from Anderson’s article: “You might think of Al Lewis, Vik Khanna and Tom Emerick as the Three Musketeers in the fight against wellness programs.“* Al and I are co-authors of the Amazon best seller, Cracking Health Costs. It describes flaws in typical corporate wellness schemes, which while profitable to wellness vendors are useless at best and can actually be harmful to workers health at worst, not to mention the inconvenience and costs of going to doctors for all that screening. Concerns about wasted productivity, anyone? How can wellness programs harm worker health? One way is by promoting gross over-testing and excessive screening by tools that have very high error rates and rates of false positives, e.g., PSA screens. One good byproduct of dumping your wellness program is to avoid all the costly and burdensome reporting ACA requires. Yet another good byproduct is letting your employees do their work at work instead of spending non-productive time every year in wellness lectures, filling out health risk assessments, reading wellness-related emails and brochures, etc., etc., ad nauseum. How can “wellnessophiles” in companies truly believe that their employees don’t already know that smoking, overeating, lack of exercise and excessive consumption of concentrated sugars are not good for them? Do wellness proponents truly believe that the employees’ doctors haven’t already addressed those issues…not to mention public service announcements, health classes in high school and so on? Do proponents think their employees who smoke have never noticed warning labels on cigarette packs? I meet a lot of people from various walks of life. Occasionally, I ask them if their employer has a wellness program and, if so, what do they think about it. The typical first reaction is they roll their eyes. The most common comment is that the company’s wellness program is “just another [insert unflattering adjective here] HR program.” That’s usually followed by comments best described as lampooning the programs, as in “you’re not gonna believe this but…” type of comments. Interestingly, I meet HR executives who admit their wellness program are ineffective and costly, yet they cling to them. They usually give one of two reasons. One is that they don’t want to admit that their program is a big waste of money. Another common rational is some version of “Too many of our employees are unhealthy; we gotta do something.” (I put that in roughly the same category as, “the beatings will continue until morale improves.”) That line of thinking is bureaucracy at its worst. You would never spend your own money that way…or maybe they would?  Hmm. I get asked, if not wellness then what? My reply is anything that might actually save money or get better care for your workers, e.g., centers of excellence and direct contracting with providers. There is some promising work on reference-based pricing and better pharmacy management. Also, I believe we may have a surge of international medical travel in the future, too, especially to places like Health City Cayman Island (HCCI), about an hour’s flight from Miami and one of the best-quality hospitals and clinics in this hemisphere. I have visited HCCI a number of times and met a number of their surgeons. They are excellent. See also: EEOC Caves on Wellness Programs   I tried various forms of wellness in my career of running large sell-insured plans. I tried to make them work, but in the end none of them were effective, and some actually drove up health costs in a way a steely-eyed CFO would quickly understand. For about half my career, I reported through the CFO chain, not HR. CFOs really get the numbers and ask the tough ROI questions. HR executives, take note: You can increase your status and respect if you just get out of wellness. Again, it’s time to move on. While wellness at work was a noble notion and one that made sense to many on the surface, it’s time to “fess” up to your bosses. They will appreciate your message and appreciate the reduction of wasteful spending. Tom Emerick’s latest book is An Illustrated Guide to Personal Health. For further information on this topic, see the They Said What blog by Al Lewis and Vik Khanna.