Information Integration, Technology-Enabled Processes and Incentives Help Boost Health Plan Participation to Reduce Costs

WellNet Interactive President Judith Mueller Discusses How an Integrated Approach to Medical, Care and Disease Management Can Drive Engagement Rates to Over 50 Percent When Properly Managed and Incented

A new profile report on WellNet Interactive from the Healthcare Performance Management Institute shows how corporate wellness programs can improve wellness plan engagement rates to improve health outcomes while simultaneously reducing costs. The report highlights the importance of solid health plan participation rates – particularly with the segments of the community that are at risk – in achieving this dual mission.

WelllNet Interactive’s mission is to help employers leverage integrated technology and employee incentives to improve the health of their employees, while also reducing the skyrocketing cost of providing healthcare benefits. Most industry experts believe that the success of an organizational wellness program is directly tied to employee participation in that program.

The twin challenges for most companies developing such plans is how to drive employee participation and how to measure the success of their program in terms of improved health outcomes and reduced plan costs. WellNet Interactive has developed a systematic strategy for identifying and engaging with plan members that need health services the most in a HIPAA compliant manner.

In the report, Judith Mueller, president of WellNet Interactive, points out that participation rates – the percentage of people covered in a policy that actively engage with a plan by following prescribed steps to improve life-style or effectively address health issues – is typically quite low in programs administered by traditional insurance companies.

“In a carrier-based disease-management program, these engagement rates can typically hover around the 5 to 10 percent mark,” she explains in her conversation with George Pantos, executive director of the HPM Institute.

By contrast, she points out that when incentives and proper management structures are put in place, those engagement rates can reach 57 percent, with some organizations experiencing 89 percent participation with covered members of a plan.

“We have been able to demonstrate very clearly that good healthcare outcomes drive significant cost reductions. But the key to achieving these outcomes revolves around getting those covered by a plan to engage and participate effectively with wellness initiatives. It therefore follows that if you can elevate constructive participation in wellness programs, then organizations can achieve the elusive objective of bending back the healthcare cost curve,” says Mueller.

The report is one in a series of profiles that are helping enterprises in all sectors of the economy improve outcomes while bending down the cost curve by implementing management strategies that leverage technology and sound business practices.

Click to read the full summary.

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