Fazen: Preventing high health costs

November 29, 2006 @ 12:00 AM
Promotion of health and wellness seems to be everywhere we turn these days, from newly adopted city smoking bans to removing soft drinks in schools. We're seeing more communities and organizations encourage and embrace healthy lifestyle choices. It's a positive trend that's gaining momentum among Texas business and health care executives as they look for innovative solutions to their own company's health care challenges.

Leading the charge is the Texas Coalition for Worksite Wellness, a statewide, broad-based business and health care coalition dedicated to raising awareness of the benefits of maintaining a healthy work force.

This month, more than 100 public and private sector executives, health care advocates and policymakers joined Gov. Rick Perry and Paul Carrozza, CEO and president of RunTex and co-chairman of the Governor's Advisory Council on Physical Fitness for a statewide summit to encourage Texas executives to embrace worksite wellness programs as an effective way to improve the health, well-being and quality of life of Texans.

Investing in prevention and wellness does more than improve Texans' health. Texas businesses spent more than $39 billion on health care in 2000. They were left with few choices but to shift some of the cost increases to their employees. The share of health care insurance premiums paid by Texas workers increased by nearly 40 percent in just four years (2000 to 2004).

One of the culprits is that our health care system is completely focused on treating people when they're ill. According to the Partnership for Prevention, a national coalition of leading CEOs and health care advocates, 95 cents of every health care dollar is spent to treat disease, rather than invested in prevention.

It's time for Texas businesses to realize that an ounce of prevention really is worth a pound of cure. If employers were to make targeted investments in prevention and wellness, they would save in the long run.

The Partnership for Prevention estimates the average cost of adding prevention and wellness services to private health insurance programs is typically $50 to $85 per person, but the return on investment is real. Every dollar invested in worksite health promotion yields $3.50 to nearly $6 in savings through reduced absenteeism, increased productivity and decreased health-care related costs.

Several prominent Texas employers have already started investing in preventive care programs and worksite wellness initiatives.

Fort Worth's Bell Helicopter launched "Well@Bell," an incentive program that rewards healthy lifestyles and participation in physical activity and nutrition challenges. Through the program, the number of employees at risk because of physical inactivity dropped from 83 percent to 30 percent.

San Antonio's USAA eliminated smoking in its facilities in the 1990s; in 2004, it declared its entire campus smoke free. The firm then offered employees an expanded annual $350 wellness benefit that can be used to buy smoking cessation products. Since 2004, more than 575 USAA employees and family members have taken advantage of the smoking-cessation benefits.

Bell Helicopter and USAA are just two examples of Texas workplace wellness innovators. These companies and others like them understand that disease is expensive. Now more than ever Texas needs a health care system that helps people stay healthy. An investment in prevention today makes good business sense.

Fazen is the president and CEO of the Texas Business Group on Health, the sponsoring organization for the Texas Coalition for Worksite Wellness.