A Message from WellNet's President

Monday, April 27, 2009Editor
Forbes Magazine
Attn: Letters to Editor

Mr. F. Mark Gumz correctly focuses on the CEO’s critical role in promoting employee wellness (CEO’s Rx: Improve Your Employees Health Now Apr. 18, see below for the piece). C-level management coping with health costs -- often one of the largest business expense line items -- increasingly recognizes the link between employee health, productivity and the bottom line. America’s corporate CEOs must become engaged in their health programs and lead the effort to improve the nation’s health. To reduce costs and reward outcomes, CEOs must adopt new corporate models that improve employee long-term health. This includes corporate wellness and disease management programs as well as technology-driven innovation that has always been at the core of successful U.S. companies. New business models now allow technology to be used by CEOs to make real-time strategic decisions about corporate health programs. Former Intel chairman Craig Barrett correctly noted the importance of CEO accountability for health by saying: “If you are a corporate CEO and you just send [this message] down your human resources chain of command for follow-up, you’ve missed the point.”

Keith Lemer
President
WellNet Healthcare
Bethesda, MD

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Leadership
One CEO's Rx: Improve Your Employees' Health Now
F. Mark Gumz 04.16.09, 2:40 PM ET

Providing your staff with quality health care options while managing bottom-line costs is harder than ever now. Chief executive officers have their hands full just addressing basic employee expenses like compensation. But we absolutely have to think creatively about improving the long-term health of our employees, and without spending too much.

Wise employee health care management saves money while bringing about long-term gains from increased overall employee wellness. Employees not performing at their full potential put their companies at risk just the way injured athletes put their teams at risk. That's why you need to find ways to enable your employees to make changes in their behavior that help themselves and help the company. It can have a turbocharged effect on your business.

All CEOs should know the top categories in their health care spending and address them head-on. The Centers for Disease Control informs us that more than 75% of the nation's health care costs can be attributed to patients with just five chronic conditions: congestive heart failure, asthma, diabetes, coronary artery disease and depression. The National Business Group on Health estimates that U.S. employers collectively spend $170 billion annually on smoking-related health expenses, lost productivity time and absenteeism. Know how such costs are affecting your company.

At Olympus Corporation of the Americas, the cost of insuring our 4,000 employees and their immediate families comes to more than $11,000 a year per family for the company-paid portion, which is at least 80% of the total cost per employee, so getting employees and their families to live a healthy life is very important for us. We have had great results with our overall employee wellness program by including benefits such as Weight Watchers programs, free flu shots, cancer screenings, and a personal wellness report that provides the findings from extensive blood tests and hypertension screening and offers confidential, customized suggestions to help employees identify and reduce their specific health risks, so they can lead healthier lives.

Why does the U.S. spend as vastly as it does on health care and still have so many challenges in health? Because people aren't as knowledgeable and active as they need to be about taking care of themselves. As consumers, employees increasingly seek out their own health care information. CEOs need to make sure to provide information that is thorough and correct, to help employees choose appropriate courses of treatment for themselves and their families. You can easily integrate online tools into your company's education program and offer information on new procedures and treatments. When educated employees change their behavior and that of their families, health care costs go down, sick days diminish and productivity rises.

It's also critical not only to offer health savings accounts but also to educate your employees in how to take advantage of them. HSAs not only help employees save money to pay medical bills; they also give them more control over how their health care dollars are spent.

Ultimately, every CEO has a responsibility to understand his or her line-item health care costs and know what he or she can do to produce a win-win scenario for the company: cutting bottom-line costs while improving employees' long-term health and thus productivity and morale. Employees appreciate an employer who cares about them and invests in them -- and that appreciation brings both immediate and long-term rewards to the company.

F. Mark Gumz is president and chief executive officer of Olympus Corporation of the Americas.