Binge-Eating Hospital Employees Cost Big Bucks

Identifying eating disorders is critical to any weight management program.

"If you are binge eating it is going to be very hard if not impossible to manage weight without getting that behavior under control," Bedrosian says. "Any kind of gastroenterological surgeries that are performed, most of those programs require people to get screened for eating disorders. If they detect that they treat it before the do any surgery."     

Bedrosian says the best way to identify binge eating is to ask employees in confidential health assessments. "I don't think an employer especially should be directly questioning people," he says. "If there is a health risk appraisal people can take this and be secure that the information is confidential and will not go to their employer or anyone else they don't want to reveal it to. That is the best way to get people to open up."

"It could be in a computer-based survey where person gets one-on-one feedback that they don't necessarily share or a clinical interview with healthcare provider," he says. "What I'm suggesting is you give people different ways of sharing that information. If someone doesn't necessarily want to come forward then educating about binge eating can be part of the curriculum in a weight management program."