Best practices in corporate wellness

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1 Best practices in corporate wellness INDUSTRY FOCUS: Higher education FEATURED COMPANY: North Idaho College Founded in 1933, North Idaho College (NIC) is a comprehensive community college located on the shores of Lake Coeur d Alene. NIC offers degrees and certificates in a wide spectrum of academic transfer, professional-technical, and general education programs. Approximately 6,700 students are enrolled in credit classes and more than 6,000 participate annually in non-credit courses offered by the Workforce Training Center in Post Falls.

2 North Idaho College stands out in the higher education sector as an organization with a progressive health and wellness policy for its employees. The college uses proven tactics to improve health care outcomes and increase the return on its wellness investments, such as using biometric data to reveal each employee s critical health metrics and offering monetary incentives to help employees meet specific wellness goals. BioIQ gives us a baseline, with a consistent data set and year-over-year comparisons. Many people in our employee population are looking more closely at their health. In the past our wellness program was not nearly as substantial as it is now, says Andrea Woempner, an HR Specialist at North Idaho College. It included flu shots, community workshops, and wellness newsletters. Now the program includes regular speakers, wellness fairs, and biometric screening coordinated by BioIQ with incentives tied to outcomes to encourage people to stay healthy. Embracing population health screening Woempner has worked in the North Idaho College HR department for nine years. She currently manages the employee benefits and wellness programs for the college s 1,200 employees. She says their wellness program has evolved significantly over the last five years, from a division of Student Health to a comprehensive staff program that engages hundreds of faculty and staff members. At a recommendation from Mercer, NIC contracted with BioIQ to improve wellness participation and streamline the overall health-screening experience. The college leveraged the BioIQ Dimensions Platform to gather biometric data from employees and dependents via on-site screening appointments. Wellness participants now enjoy a cohesive interface for ordering tests, scheduling appointments, and viewing results, with intuitive graphs to monitor year-over-year trends and dashboards to track their completion of rewards and activities. The health tests include a complete cholesterol/lipid panel to screen for heart disease and a fasting blood glucose test to screen for diabetes and pre-diabetes.

3 All college employees can obtain health-screening services, and those who are enrolled in the NIC medical insurance program can earn incentives of up to $1,000 per year ($2,000 if a dependent participates). A large portion of these incentives are tied to regular biometric testing to gauge the population s risk for chronic conditions such as cancer, diabetes, and heart disease. BioIQ gives us a baseline, Woempner says, with a consistent data set and year-overyear comparisons. Many people in our employee population are looking more closely at their health. By contrast, Woempner describes their previous screening program as a low caliber experience in which employees had to wait a long time to complete the blood tests and measurements. Also, while the data received was fairly detailed, we had nothing to compare it to, she adds. Program Year 2 Biometrics Lipid Panel, Fasting Glucose, Blood Pressure, Body Mass Index (BMI) Screening Methods On-site screening events and personal physician visits Elegible Population All college employees (faculty and staff) Incentive Up to $1,000 based on biometric values, fitness logs, tobacco affidavit, and health/wellness exams Next Steps Institute health coaching

4 A progressive incentive structure Incentives for the biometric screening portion of NIC s wellness program can reach $400 per employee. This breaks down as follows: a $100 incentive for participating and $75 for each biometric level that is within range (cholesterol, body-mass-index, blood pressure, and glucose). Other incentives are tied to exercise. For example, employees can walk three times per week for at least 20 minutes to earn $100 for fall semester and $100 for spring semester. They can also earn $100 for completing an annual wellness exam, $25 for a tobacco a davit, and $75 for completing a general health assessment. Wellness participants have become much more aware of their risk factors, says Woempner. Some people in the program have told me they learned about a previously unknown risk for diabetes and heart disease. One employee had such high blood pressure that the onsite nurse sent him straight to the hospital because she was afraid he could have a stroke. This individual had no idea about his condition.

5 In other cases simply having a high body-mass-index was a huge motivator for people to lose weight and exercise more regularly. We were doing weight loss studies with a small control group to gauge the impact of gym memberships and personal health coaching, notes Woempner. The results were compelling enough to motivate the college to pay the member rate for employees wh who want to join. That s step one. Over time we will be looking more closely at outcomes from this program. By catching serious conditions in their early stages we can hopefully minimize major claims later on. Our utilization of preventive services has increased steadily over the last several years, and fewer claims have reached the pooling point. From activities to outcomes For many organizations the progression from activity-only to outcome-based wellness is a logical step. BioIQ facilitates this transition with its data-driven health screening and wellness programs. Online dashboards let individuals track their progress and help administrators manage the rewards and incentives while protecting personal health information. Aggregate reports reveal population trends year over year. NIC is embracing this type of outcomes-based wellness program, setting an example for other educational institutions to follow. The wellness team is often willing to try new activities and programs, and then to tie the corresponding incentives to a progressive set of results. Initially, people can earn the incentives merely by participating. Over time, these monetary rewards are tied to agreed upon outcomes all with an eye to helping people improve their health. Within the education sector we are often told that we are ahead of the curve with our wellness program, says Woempner. Other colleges don t have the emphasis on screening, outcomes, and incentives that we do. Our HR director speaks at national conferences about wellness. He also presented a wellness program to the Coeur d Alene County government.

6 In the future the college also plans to institute a health-coaching option for people who have two or more biometrics out of range. Our goal is to have lower insurance rates, Woempner concludes. By catching serious conditions in their early stages we can hopefully minimize major claims later on. Our utilization of preventive services has increased steadily over the last several years, and fewer claims have reached the pooling point. We will soon have two years of comparable data to see how the population is doing so we can gauge if we are making improvements State Street, Suite 200 Santa Barbara, CA Phone: info@bioiq.com