Employers nationwide are lowering health insurance benefits
to cut premium costs, but why not instead harness health IT with an online diet
and exercise program to persuade your employees to lead more healthy
lifestyles? Can such employer-sponsored online behavior modification programs
really cut health care costs?
To answer the question of whether employer-sponsored online
health IT can lower the health-benefit costs to employers, Boston
University researchers designed the
"Dash for Health" program—an online nutrition and exercise
behavior-modification program. Created by researchers from Boston University
School of Medicine (BUSM) and Boston University School of Public Health
(BUSPH), Dash is currently being offered as a free, voluntary benefit to employees
at the EMC, Boston
Medical Center,
CVS/Caremark and some employees at Partners
Healthcare.
As the cost of health insurance premiums continues to rise
faster than inflation, employers are increasingly looking for smarter ways to
decrease the burden of health care costs instead of just cutting benefits.
Smarter alternatives like Dash for Health offer low-cost online resources that
can encourage healthful lifestyles with voluntary behavior modification—basically
Websites that encourage exercise, proper diet and preventative measures like
regular checkups and adherence to treatment regimes.
Dash for Health encourages employees to log in at least once
a week to report on their healthful activities and receive advice on how to
improve their nutrition and exercise habits. By entering their blood pressure,
weight and other relevant medical data, the Website personalizes its nutrition
and exercise advice. Detailed progress reports also encourage employees to
gradually change their habits for the better, inducing gradually improving
healthful benefits over the long term.
A study to measure the short-term health care cost benefits
of Dash for Health, recently published in the Journal of Medical Internet
Research, found a profound benefit to those at risk for
higher-than-normal health benefit costs. Employees at risk for cardiovascular
conditions, in particular, were found to lower their health care costs every
time they signed onto the Dash for Health Website.
The yearlong study results of the benefits of
Dash for Health focused on the efforts of 735 employees with
cardiovascular conditions such as diabetes, hypertension and high cholesterol.
The results showed that employees saved their employers an average of $55 in
health care costs every time they signed onto the Website. Over the year, the
cardiovascular risk group reaped an average savings of $827 on their health
care costs.
A previous study found that even employees without high-risk
conditions benefited from Dash for Health by losing weight, lowering their
blood pressure and improving their eating habits. Studies ranging over several
years would have to be performed to measure how much a healthier lifestyle
lowers long-term health care costs, but no health care cost savings was
detected in the low-risk employee group for this short-term one-year study.
