Background
Workplace wellness programs hold promise for managing the health and costs of the
U.S. workforce. These programs have not been rigorously tested in healthcare worksites.
Purpose
To evaluate the impact of MyHealth on the health and costs of UPMC healthcare workers.
Design
Five-year observational study conducted in 2013 with subgroup analyses and propensity-matched
pair comparisons to more accurately interpret program effects.
Setting/participants
UPMC, an integrated health care delivery and financing system headquartered in Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania. Participants included 13,627 UPMC employees who were continuously enrolled
in UPMC-sponsored health insurance during the study period and demonstrated participation
in MyHealth by completing a Health Risk Assessment in both 2007 and 2011, as well as 4,448
other healthcare workers employed outside of UPMC who did not participate in the program.
Intervention
A comprehensive wellness, prevention, and chronic disease management program that
ties achievement of health and wellness requirements to receipt of an annual credit
on participants’ health insurance deductible.
Main outcome measures
Health-risk levels, medical, pharmacy, and total healthcare costs, and Healthcare
Effectiveness Data and Information Set performance rates for prevention and chronic
disease management.
Results
Significant improvements in health-risk status and increases in use of preventive
and chronic disease management services were observed in the intervention group. Although
total healthcare costs increased significantly, reductions in costs were significant
for those who moved from higher- to the lowest-risk levels. The contrast differences
in costs between reduced- and maintained-risk groups was also significant. Matched
pair comparisons provided further evidence of program effects on observed reductions
in costs and improvements in prevention, but not improvements in chronic disease management.
Conclusions
Incorporating incentivized health management strategies in employer-sponsored health
insurance benefit designs can serve as a useful, though not sufficient, tool for managing
the health and costs of the U.S. healthcare workforce.
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: June 17, 2014
Identification
Copyright
© 2014 American Journal of Preventive Medicine. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
