Rising health care benefits costs are a major concern for every company. Your investment in a Corporate Wellness Program can help to control the increases in your health care costs with a Return on Investment of $2.30 to $5.00 for every dollar spent.

The United States is the leader in health care spending but still ranks 6th in life expectancy. As our ability to extend the life of those with disease increases, it is a certainty that those health care costs will continue to increase. Only preventive medicine holds the potential of limiting your company’s future health care expenditures.

More than 60 percent of health care costs are related to heart disease alone. New technological advances allow us to identify who is developing heart disease as much as 10 years before they are at risk for a heart attack or need expensive and invasive treatment. Risk factor modification coupled with targeted pharmacological intervention makes it possible to dramatically limit the health care costs associated with heart disease.

As much as 30-60% of all cancers in the United States are related to lifestyle and modifiable risk factors. These cancers, and their associated costs, can be prevented with early identification, screening and intervention for those at risk.

Controlling Your Health Costs

Your company’s health care costs are a direct result of the presence of health risk factors among your employees.

As the average number of risk factors per employee increase, so does the average amount of medical claims.

In a recent study by the University of Michigan, employees with 3 or more health risk factors had medical claims 78% higher than those with 0 or 1 risk factor.

Many, if not all, of these risk factors can be modified. The key is to identify which risk factors are present and then to target cost-effective strategies at reducing the prevalence of those risk factors among your employees.

Implementing Your Cost Control Program

The First Step is to identify health care risk factors within your organization.

Most claim dollars are spent on high risk individuals.

The Second Step is reduce risk factors with a Corporate Wellness Program.

Although most health care costs result from high risk individuals, all high risk individuals began as low risk.

Your Corporate Wellness Program can target high risk employees to lower their future health care costs.

The potential savings by keeping low risk employees from becoming high risk employees is even greater.