By Frank Hone
We appear to be at a remarkable crossroads regarding the health of our nation.
On one side of the story, there’s the recently published Commonwealth Fund report in which the US healthcare system ranks dead last among 11 industrialized nations – ours is the most expensive and lowest rated. This is not a news flash, but rather an unwelcome reminder of our system’s terrible inefficiencies.
On a positive note, though, we are seeing noticeable movement among our nation’s corporations to step up efforts toward improving the health and well-being of their employees.
Employers have long played a part in the health of their workforce by providing hefty subsidies for insurance, but are now increasingly proactive in promoting health behavior change.
In fact, they are the single sector of our healthcare economy with the most to gain from healthy and productive people, and they are beginning to raise their level of investment and commitment.
Lately, the emphasis has been on wellness, an occasionally controversial topic, particularly when the ROI question is raised. But perhaps more significant is the growing trend toward well-being.
We’re now seeing a fundamental strategic shift In the area of employee health and well-being improvement. The stage is set for a transformation from individual-centered health behavior change initiatives to broader, enterprise-wide well-being improvement culture.
This is a critically important shift. The fact is that the US is losing our global competitive edge, in part because of the relatively poor health of our people. It is well known that our healthcare system is expensive and inefficient, and that many of our people also have detrimental lifestyle habits that can lead to preventable conditions and diseases, and that the direction of both trends is not good.