Many leading employers in the wellness arena, such as Pepsico, Dell, and IBM, place tremendous emphasis on getting employees to complete health risk assessments (HRA). Why? Well, when effectively communicated and incentivized, HRAs can be a reliable mechanism to engage and educate employees and improve their health status, as well as provide metrics to help manage an employer’s benefits and wellness initiatives. Many employers are putting their money where their mouth is. The use of incentive strategies has grown significantly in recent years and can run upwards of $200-300 per employee to complete an annual HRA and other “wellness activities”. What return can an employer expect that would justify that kind of up-front investment?
Leveraging HRAs to successfully identify “at-risk” individuals, while providing timely and appropriately tailored interventions, is the first reason. A comprehensive HRA tool can be utilized best when tied to an incentive and other wellness and health promotion activities.
Best-in-class HRA tools will:
- Engage unhealthy and at-risk members in adopting healthier lifestyles
- Ensure that healthy members remain healthy through innovative health promotion and wellness programs
- Measure the financial impact of a healthy (vs. unhealthy) member population or workforce
- Identify the at-risk members of an employee population and stratify them according to risk for appropriate and cost-effective intervention delivery
- Integrate Health Risk Assessments with predictive modeling capabilities, disease management programs and health promotion initiatives to create a comprehensive health management strategy
The potential that HRAs hold for improving employee health and for reducing healthcare costs is tremendous: think of it as a gateway to better employee health and lower medical costs. And there’s no better way to realize that potential than by learning from best practice leaders who have already “been there and done that.”
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