Corporate Wellness Program:

Businesses throughout America have struggled for years with the continuous increasing costs of healthcare. According to the National Coalition on Healthcare (NCHC):The costs of healthcare premiums have increased 5 times faster on average than the earnings of workers since the year 2000. The NCHC also notes that in 2005, “Employer health insurance premiums increased by 9.2%, nearly three times the rate of inflation.”

Businesses throughout America are finally recognizing that it is their profits being lost due to employee illness and injury, and that to help their bottom line they can and must take action to improve their employee’s health.

There are two approaches to reducing healthcare costs:

1. The first is to shop for less expensive coverage.
2. The second, and more effective, is to reduce the risk of illness and injury.

What businesses need is a cutting-edge solution to your healthcare costs that will increase your profits and employee production while reducing absenteeism and workers’ compensation claims.

Reports show that healthier employees spend fewer days away from work due to illness, saving the company thousands and even millions of dollars on down time and temporary help. Wellness programs can also help alleviate depression and help employees manage their time and stress levels better, all of which are contributing factors to missed work days.

In one study, members of a Travelers fitness center were absent from work significantly fewer days than nonmembers, and in another four year study, sick leave was reduced 19%. At DuPont, each dollar invested in workplace health promotion yielded $1.42 in lower absenteeism costs over a 2 year period.

The American Journal of Public Health reported that Johnson and Johnson reduced their absenteeism rate by 15% within two years of introducing their wellness program. They also cut their hospital costs by 34% after just three years.

More than 80% of disease and illness can be traced to three contributing factors.

• Being overweight
• Unmanaged stress
• Repetitive motion disorders

The good news is that all three of these factors can be easily and inexpensively addressed to reduce healthcare costs.

First, let’s look at what having overweight employees is costing you:

According to researchers at Johns Hopkins University, “Obesity is a public health crisis. If the rate of obesity and overweight continues at this pace, by 2015, 75 percent of adults and nearly 24 percent of U.S. children and adolescents will be overweight or obese,” said Youfa Wang, MD, PhD, lead author of the study.

A Duke University Medical Center analysis found that obese workers filed twice the number of workers’ compensation claims, had 7 times higher medical costs from those claims and lost 13 times more workdays from work injury or work illness than did non-obese workers.

Professor Julie Byles from the University of Newcastle conducted a study assessing the health of over 30,000 Australian women over a 10-year period from 1996 to 2006. The report found, “That being overweight or obese was more consistently associated with chronic illness than smoking, alcohol use, or education,” said Professor Byles.

The Center for Disease Control notes that being overweight increases the risk of many diseases and health conditions including: high blood pressure, high total cholesterol or triglycerides, Type 2 Diabetes, heart disease, stroke, gall bladder disease, osteoarthritis, sleep apnea, respiratory problems and some cancers (endometrial, breast and colon).

The solution to this problem is a program that addresses the true cause of being overweight for each individual and coaches them through it.

The program we have found to be the most effective is one that addresses the cause of weight gain as well as the difficulties related to losing weight. Results may vary. In a recent study, participants averaged a weight loss of 7 pounds at the completion of their first 9-day program.

The program is based on the concept that our population is overweight, in part, due to the 82,000 chemicals in our air, food and water that the body stores in our fat cells.

Here are just a few facts about the amount of chemicals in our environment:

Our Air: According to the World Book Encyclopedia, more than 2.4 billion pounds of air pollution went into the air in the U.S in 1989 alone. It has only gotten worse.

Our Food: In the book What You Don’t Know May Be Killing You, author Don Colbert, M.D., discovered there are over 3000 chemicals and 10,000 solvents, emulsifiers (used to stabilize processed foods) and preservatives in our food.

Our Water: According to the World Book Encyclopedia, a study was done which found 188 million pounds of chemicals were discharged into our lakes, streams and rivers.

One of the ways the liver deals with impurities is to increase body fat to enfold these impurities and to protect the body from their influence. Diets are not successful for long term weight loss because they don’t address the need to cleanse the body of impurities.

The first major company to use this program had their 5 top executives lose a total of 142 pounds with an average of 29.6 pounds per person. Another company called Smur-fit Storage Containers signed on to do the program with their 40 national and international sites. The county of Vermillion in Illinois has enrolled for 27 of their departments onto the program.

Our organization would provide this weight loss method to your employees as part of an overall program. There would be a cost per employee for the products and also for each participants evaluation, assessment and our individual one-on-one supervision throughout the intensive nutritional cleanse program. Your company could share in this expense as an incentive for your employees or not.

This solution to weight loss would be easier than what Sprint Network Corp. did. They spent the money to install parking lots further from their buildings and removed elevators to make their employees walk more to lose weight! It would also be less expensive than the program Microsoft offers, which provides 80% of their employee weight loss costs up to $6,000. Cecily Hall, Microsoft’s Director of U.S. Benefits says the company has already made a one-to-one return on their investment since the program’s inception in 2002. Our program costs a lot less than $6000 per employee.

The second area our wellness program would address is the negative effect stress has on one’s health.

According to Dr. Han Selye’s breakthrough book, Stress Without Distress, stress and distress destroys the body by causing the over production of adrenal gland hormones.

Stress and the Immune System:

The National Institute of Health (NIH) reported in October 2000, that if you’re chronically stressed, the part of the brain that controls the adrenal glands will cause a constant release of hormones. The immune cells are bathed in molecules that are essentially telling them to stop fighting, which then reduces resistance to disease. And so, in situations of chronic stress, immune cells are less able to respond to an invader like bacteria or a virus.

In a stressful situation the digestive tract and the immune system temporarily halt their functions to allow for the immediate and urgent problem to be resolved. What happens if stress continues in a person’s life and is not the result of a rare situation, but rather the continuous stress of money, marriage, and work, etc.? The answer is a loss of normal digestion, a lowering of immunity and added stress on the heart. Continued stress equals absenteeism, lost productivity and increased healthcare costs.

There are two simple, noninvasive tests we provide to determine adrenal gland function: a blood pressure test called the Ragland’s Test, and the Paradoxical Pupillary Reaction Test, which determines the pupil’s response to light. Both of these tests can show weak adrenal gland function from too much stress.

As part of our wellness service, you and all your employees would have your adrenal glands checked. A program based on what was found would be given to each individual. The blood pressure check for adrenal gland function would also help provide early detection of high blood pressure and could prevent heart attacks and strokes amongst your work force.

The program to restore normal adrenal gland function usually includes eliminating caffeine and reducing sugar as well as taking certain natural supplements.

The third area of corporate healthcare costs that should be addressed is preventing on-the-job injuries which primarily come from repetitive motion disorders.

Repetitive motion disorders simply means injuries caused, not by major trauma, but by thousands of micro traumas. Little traumas day after day can be as destructive to the body as major falls or accidents. The most common repetitive motion disorders affect the wrist if you type, use a computer, scan products, etc., or affect your back if you are constantly lifting or bending. Repetitive motion disorders, if they lead to surgery, have the added expense of disability claims, etc.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor, repetitive motion, such as grasping tools, scanning groceries, and typing, resulted in the longest absences from work in 2002. Among major disabling injuries and illnesses, median days away from work were highest for Carpal Tunnel Syndrome.

The National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health Administration stated: 60% of all on-the-job injuries will be caused by repetitive motion injuries. Of these, Carpal Tunnel Syndrome is the most frequent. The average Carpal Tunnel Syndrome injury costs approximately $4,000 in benefits and rehabilitation per patient. If surgical intervention was required, the costs rose to more than $20,000 per patient.

As part of our wellness program we will train your employees on a 5-minute stretch program to be done once per day that can lessen the cumulative affects of at risk postures to help prevent these problems and reduce workers’ compensation injuries from occurring. There are also a series of stretches to prevent hand and wrist problems.

Howalt-McDowell Insurance in Sioux Falls, S.D., is one company seeing the results of employee wellness. What began as an educational effort to encourage employees to seek preventive care, quickly turned into an employee screening program and one-on-one meetings with a case manager. Once the health evaluations were complete, Howalt-McDowell management looked at the health risks and then implemented staff lunch-and-learns and employee activities to address those specific conditions.

“I can’t underestimate the value of wellness screenings. Our employees were able to identify dangerous health conditions before they became serious and we were able to prevent the impact on the health plan,” said Lorna Williamson human resources manager for Howalt-McDowell Insurance. “Employees were somewhat apprehensive about wellness at first, but by the end of the first year, we reached nearly 99 percent participation. Wellness is working for us, we’re having a lot of fun with it and we’re starting to see the results.”

Let’s summarize the program we are offering you, its value and your costs.

The program would work as follows: Myself and my staff would come to your company and evaluate the health needs of each employee one-on-one over several days or weeks. Each employee would fill out a stress questionnaire, be weighed, have their blood pressure and adrenal glands tested and receive any other tests indicated.

Dietary modifications would be offered and, for those it would help, so would a weight loss cleansing program. Those interested in weight loss would all be invited to a lecture on how the program works. Those choosing to do the program can pay on their own or be sponsored in part or in full by your company. Some companies bonus their employees a dollar for every pound they lose.

In addition, we would hold wellness workshops on different health topics such as: weight loss, women’s hormone problems, natural remedies to arthritis pain, fibromyalgia, how to improve digestion, etc., on a regular basis based upon the number of your employees and the time available. These workshops would be done over lunch as a “lunch and learn” series so as to not interfere with your employees’ work day or production.

We would do an on-sight ergonomic evaluation to choose a 5-minute stretch program for your company. We would train team leaders to lead the 5-minute stretch each morning to prevent on-the-job injuries.

We would provide this complete wellness program for a per employee cost per year. You can cancel the program anytime you want with 30 days notice. Our anticipated return to you would be a minimum of 5 to 1. For every dollar you spend you should receive (in reduced healthcare costs, reduced absenteeism, reduced workers’ comp claims and increased productivity) a 500 percent annual return!

In addition, you will help prolong your employees’ lives as well as your own and help everyone involved lead a healthier and happier life.

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References:

1. The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Employee Health Benefits: 2006 Annual Survey. 26 September 2006. http://www.kff.org/insurance/
2. Prevent Disease.com, WELCOA (Wellness Councils of America) – 1999
3. Prevent Disease.com, http://preventdisease.com/worksite_wellness/worksite_wellness.html
4. Prevent Disease.com, Johnson & Johnson, Human Resources Executive, April 1993
5. Health Impact, 07/10/07
6. Associated Press Published April 24, 2007
7. Research Australia, http://researchaustralia.org/ra.aspx
8. Center for Disease Control, Overweight and Obesity: Home, http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/index.html
9. The Pollution Within By David Ewing Duncan, http://www.nationalgeographic.com./
10. McGowin, A., “Environmental Pollution,” World Book Encyclopedia, 6, pp.330-340,1993.
11. What You Don’t Know May Be Killing You by Dr. Don Colbert, MD, Siloam Press (January 2004)
12. McGowin, A., “Environmental Pollution,” World Book Encyclopedia, 6, pp.330-340,1993. Traditional Diet vs. Cleansing
13. Business Week, “More Micro, Less Soft”, http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_48/b4011063.htm?chan=search
14. The NIH Word on Health, October 2000, http://www.nih.gov/news/WordonHealth/oct2000/story01.htm
15. Bureau of Labor Statistics U.S. Department of Labor
16. National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, as quoted in Chiropractic Products, February 1997, p. 46, Op cit. NIOSH Facts, p. 1.
17. The Principal Financial Group®, “Finally, A Reason to Feel Good About Healthcare”, http://www.principal.com/about/news/2007/lhs020507.htm.

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