Managed Care - February 2008 - (Page 25) In the face of stiff competition from a growing category of dedicated wellness companies, major health plans are launching sophisticated, ambitious programs to slake employers’ thirst for these products the future of the health insurance industry. “The ability of WellPoint to play in that space is phenomenal because we have experience in all modalities of what an employer and employee need to manage and maximize health,” she says. She and other leaders in the wellness movement at health plans make a convincing argument that workers’ health risks can, and must, be identified and mitigated before they turn into high-cost medical problems in the future. Chris Coloian, vice president for health advocacy products at Cigna, points to two statistics — 66 percent of Americans are overweight and 20 percent smoke — as primary drivers for employers’ focus on wellness. “This allows for dialogue between us and the consumer and the plan sponsor to really move to a new level,” he says. That’s why Cigna and all the other national plans are rapidly adding new services, the most notable of which are health coaching programs. Most plans assign online and telephone coaches who work one on one with workers to get them to stop smoking, to manage their chronic condition, or to get off the couch, into the gym, and eating carrots instead of carrot cake. Yes, coach Motivating someone to change behaviors is not easy. Cigna, Coloian says, has trained its coaches to “deeply find the motivation within an individual to help him make sustaining lifestyle changes that help him overcome something that is contributing to health risk in the future.” Thomas D. Snook, a principal and actuary at Milliman, cautions against promising more than PHOTOGRAPH BY DENNY COLLINS “Employers are interested not only in how much their health insurance costs but also how often people show up to work [and] how they feel when they’re at work,” says Thomas D. Snook, a principal and actuary at Milliman. FEBRUARY 2008 / MANAGED CARE 25
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