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Unhealthy Workers Bloat Hospital Budgets

 |  By Philip Betbeze  
   September 16, 2011

Who hasn't heard a story, whether apocryphal or not, about the chain-smoking doctor or the 350-lb. nurse? I've seen both with my own two eyes, but of course, those random samples obviously aren't representative of the group—are they?

Maybe they're a little closer to the truth than we realized. It seems that hospital workers are among the unhealthiest of us all. And—hold on to your stethoscopes--there's actual science to back up that claim. A new Thomson Reuters Healthcare study says that hospital workers not only are generally sicker than the general population, but that they spend about 10% more on healthcare services and consume more of those services.

The study analyzed the health risk and utilization of 1.1 million hospital workers and compared them with 17.8 million health plan members across all industries nationwide.

Among the interesting nuggets:

  • Hospital employees and their dependents saw their physicians less often than the general public, but were 22% more likely to make an ER visit and spent 18% more time in the hospital if they went there.
  • The average annual cost for healthcare for hospital workers and their dependents was $4,662, or $538 more than the general population.
  • Hospital workers, the study authors speculate, are more likely to access expensive healthcare services because they are so convenient, and they may access care more frequently because they are more in tune with their symptoms, and the disparities do not result from hospital workers' increased exposure to communicable diseases.
  • A hospital or health system with 16,000 employees would save an estimated $1.5 million annually in medical and pharmacy costs for each 1% reduction in health risk.

 

It's that last nugget on which I really want to focus.

Granted, most of you who are reading this aren't leading institutions of nearly that size. But even if you halve those numbers, you're still talking about serious cash. So what's a leader to do?

Well, you could start by making some of the changes many employers and health insurers are making by creating real incentives that work for employees to take better care of themselves. Leadership means getting the people who work for you to live healthier lives.

And oh yeah, there's also a financial benefit involved. That means adding smoking cessation programs, wellness benefits, chronic illness management and monitoring—and when those aren't enough, you bring in the sticks—higher co-pays, higher coinsurance, and higher premiums for those who refuse to at least try to live healthier.

I'm not smart enough to figure out all the ways you could incent your workers to live healthier—that's your job—but there's plenty of help available.

Some health systems are already doing this. But clearly, the majority is not as successful with this imperative as they would like. Perhaps they're not giving it the kind of attention those hard savings numbers would seem to warrant, but you're transitioning from a sick-care system to a healthcare system already.

Through accountable care arrangements with your payers and reimbursement incentives/disincentives from CMS, among other initiatives designed to improve the continuum of care and cut costs, you might as well practice this challenging work on your own employees.

Better get going. It seems as though you're playing catch-up.

Philip Betbeze is the senior leadership editor at HealthLeaders.

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