Company wellness plans target medical costs

Company wellness plans are going beyond the office health fair and lunchtime walks around the parking lot.

Getting employees jazzed about losing weight and quitting smoking is rarely enough to change lives, experts say.

So wellness plans with teeth are hitting the South Carolina market. These programs offer in-depth screening and health counseling, targeting at-risk populations.

But with a tight economy, businesses may not be willing to pay for the help, and critics are skeptical of the cost savings.

Evidence-based wellness plans, which tout the potential for reduced premiums from insurers, are emerging largely as a remedy to rising medical costs.

Health insurance premiums have increased more than 100 percent during the last decade, about 8 percent annually, according to the Urban Institute think tank. Estimates show that companies will spend $7,720 per employee on health care in 2008, $500 more than last year, according to the nonprofit National Business Group on Health.

About half of large employers use incentives to encourage workers to participate in health improvement programs, according to a survey by the National Business Group on Health and a consulting firm.

"We need to do something about the rising cost of insurance," said Mindy Buhrmaster, vice president of personnel for the Bank of South Carolina, which has 70 employees.

Buhrmaster joined a roomful of human resources folks Thursday to hear about a wellness plan offered by Fayetteville, N.C.-based Doctors Direct Healthcare.

She sees the absenteeism reports, and she understands the cost of chronic disease, she said.

"It's a whole new concept," Burhmaster said of the data-driven approach to wellness. But it is the bottom line that rules. "Maybe eventually, but not right now," she said of buying into a program.

Columbia-based health care consultant Lynn Bailey said that wellness plans are "one of the myths of health care."

Except for two proven areas of savings — quitting smoking and gastric bypass surgery — there is little evidence that prevention saves money, Bailey said. You may prevent the heart attack in mid-life but live long enough to develop Alzheimer's disease, she said.

Prevention improves the quality of care and the quality of lives, but "if you want to save money in health care, die young and die fast," she said.

Reach Jill Coley at 937-5719 or jcoley@postandcourier.com.