A recent survey of employers shows more than half would like to improve their employees' health habits as a means of reining in the rising cost of providing health benefits.
The 2011 Health Care Survey, by human resources consulting firm Aon Hewitt, surveyed 1,028 employers nationwide to find what healthcare goals employers would like to achieve for 2011 and in the coming years.
The top five responses were:
- Improving employee health habits (56 percent);
- Lowering the healthcare cost trend (49 percent);
- Decreasing worker health risk (44 percent);
- Increasing participant awareness of health issues (37 percent); and
- Enhancing participation in health improvement/disease management programs (37 percent).
[See also: Study: U.S. workforce wellness declining; Moody's report shows decline in healthcare utilization due to employee benefits changes]
These goals may prove difficult – 56 percent of employers said motivating participants to change unhealthy behaviors is the most significant challenge to meeting these goals. This despite the fact that 70 percent of employers reported offering disease management programs and 64 percent have health and wellness improvement programs.
"Despite reform, organizations still face rising costs and worsening population health," said John Zern, the Americas Health & Benefits Practice leader for Aon Hewitt. "It's clear that traditional annual trend mitigation tactics alone won't work. As a result, leading employers are implementing a 'house money, house rules' environment, using a mix of incentives, penalties and targeted messaging to reward healthy behaviors."
Even with these goals at the forefront, many employers are left to play catch-up if they want to encourage behavioral changes in their employee population. According to the report, only 22 percent of employers will have programs in place by the end of 2011 that reward employees for achieving specific health outcomes, while another 10 percent say they have plans to penalize those who exhibit unhealthy behavior.
Money still serves as the primary incentive or penalty among employers who want to influence employee health behavior, with 66 percent offering monetary incentives and another 9 percent having monetary penalties.
"In a challenging economy, organizations are using financial incentives, as a mix of rewards and penalties, to motivate behavior change," said Jennifer Boehm, project leader for the survey and a principal in Aon Hewitt's Health & Benefits Practice. "However, leading employers also recognize that success requires more than just dollars; those organizations also focus on marketing health improvement services, eliminating barriers to needed care and measuring the impact of specific interventions."
The increased focus on employee health comes after most employers used 2010 to come to terms with the new landscape presented by the passage of health reform. With health insurance exchanges slated for 2014 and potential excise taxes in 2018, employers are taking a more active role in retooling their health benefits packages and attempting to set up health benefits to reflect the coming changes.
Most employers indicate they will remain active players in providing health benefits and take on most of the burden in providing these programs to their employees. But many also report that they will accelerate cost shifting to employees over the coming years.
"This is a potential cause for concern if cost sharing is not balanced with other cost reduction strategies," the report noted. "Given the industry-wide forecasts of high healthcare cost trends, cost shifting alone is unsustainable – for both employers and employees."