Success Stories
Clear incentives, communication help Louisiana health system find
wellness success
By Joan K. Mollohan, SPhR
At Ochsner Health System, a non- profit integrated health care system of eight hospitals and 35 clinics located throughout Louisiana, we had been
monitoring our rising health care costs
and employee wellness since 2003. Our
organization had quickly grown to 10,000
employees after several new acquisitions
post-Hurricane Katrina.
As we continued to expand, it became
clear that a more integrated and accessible
employee health program was needed to
replace the home-grown, manual-based
wellness program we had in place. Most
importantly, with so many entities under
the Ochsner umbrella, improving overall employee wellness and reducing our
health care costs company-wide was a major strategic initiative; 7,212 of Ochsner’s
employees are participants in the Ochsner
self-insured health plan. Ochsner provides
a generous premium subsidy to all levels of
coverage, so having wellness a top priority for employees was the way to engage
employees in the importance of partnering
with the company to take responsibility
for their own health. The magic was aligning the medical plan premiums in favor
of those who participated in the wellness
program.
To achieve these goals, the Ochsner
team recognized there were a few important challenges to overcome. First, we
required a more systematic approach to
track and measure each employee’s physical activity. Although Ochsner’s previous
wellness program enabled employees to
earn rewards for staying active, the program relied on employees manually entering activities over the course of the year
and submitting the tracking logs to our
wellness staff for approval.
It also was vital to be able to track and
monitor improvements to overall employee health and ultimately reward those employees who took their health seriously.
The second challenge was identifying
how to increase employee participation.
Historically, Ochsner’s wellness program
participation rates hovered around 30%
to 40%. Though this engagement rate was
higher than traditional industry average
participation rates, we still believed there
was ample room for improvement.
Finding the solution
In December 2008, Ochsner engaged
Virgin HealthMiles to provide our employees with an automated, accurate and verifiable way to capture their daily activity.
With this new program, Ochsner employees had the opportunity to earn points
for their physical activity and participation
in the program, which enabled them to
earn up to $300 annually in cash rewards.
To further spur participation, we offered
employees the opportunity to earn significant discounts off their health insurance
premiums — up to $2,000 for a family plan
— once they reached a certain level in the
employee health program, a milestone
that reinforced CDC’s recommended activity levels.
With clear wellness incentives in place,
Ochsner launched a campaign to get as
many of our 7,212 eligible employees as
possible to participate in the employee
health program. With this premium incentive, in addition to the cash incentives
for physical activity, Ochsner’s participation rate skyrocketed to 78% of all eligible
employees within just three months of the
program launch.
To educate employees about the new
wellness program and accelerate partici-
pation, our team employed a multipronged
communications approach. In addition to
visiting all the hospital and satellite clinics
with an information table situated in high
traffic areas such as foyers and cafeterias,
we created a section dedicated to the well-
ness program on “Ochweb,” our internal
website. Here, Ochsner provided weekly
tips on how to join the wellness program
and how to earn rewards. We also offered
additional cash incentives to encourage
employee participation in the new well-
ness program. If employees enrolled in
the program within a three-month period,
they could earn a rebate of $6 per month
off their current insurance premium. We
further encouraged employees to use the
program’s capability to create online chal-
lenges to spark some friendly competition
between groups and departments.
Reaping the rewards
One of the greatest benefits Ochsner
has realized from the employee health
program is its online delivery, which has
enhanced companywide engagement. The
program has enabled employees to capture their daily activity with activity tracking devices that provide validated data.
Employees also have access to their own
online program portal where they view
their progress, upload steps captured by
their pedometers and log any other activities they have participated in, such as
an aerobics class or cycling to work from
home.
Employees also use any of the 16 health
measurement stations set up within Och-
sner’s satellite clinics and hospitals to take
key health measurements on a monthly
basis and earn rewards for doing so. With
the health measurement stations, our HR
and wellness team found that employees
were able to monitor their health in a more
validated and measureable way. The mea-
surements employees took on the stations
were instantly uploaded to their own on-
line program portal so they could follow
their success.
