Gone are the days when healthcare was simply an employer perk or afterthought. Today, protecting and nurturing the collective health of your employees—a company’s health dividend—is a quantifiable asset with an inherent value no different from any other that a company possesses. Like any asset, an employer’s health dividend must be measured, nurtured and, ultimately, protected. That’s where Healthy Business Group (HBG) comes in. A health dividend manager, HBG will help measure the significant health risks for each of your employees, as well as for across your entire company as a whole.
This level of vigilance is good for employees and employers alike as it puts them both on a footing towards improved health.
It seems obvious that being healthy is preferable, but there’s a compelling financial argument for employers as well: healthy employees cost less than sick ones.
How much less? As just one example, consider that according to Duke University Medical Center, workers suffering from obesity are twice as likely to file workers’ compensation claims and are proven to have medical costs 7 times the average. Their sick days: 13 times greater.
What this does for a company’s productivity is devastating, but the cumulative effect on healthcare costs is staggering: Since 1980, healthcare spending has outpaced consumer spending by a factor of three and gone from 9% of GDP to 18%. By 2015, that figure is expected to reach a whopping 22%.
And going forward, the prognosis is even worse:
Nearly 3/4 of all Americans are now overweight and 1/3 qualify as obese
Cardiovascular disease and stroke are now the leading cause of death in the US
17.5 million Americans will be afflicted with diabetes and 25.1 million with cardiovascular disease
1 in 3 children born after the year 2000 will develop diabetes by age 50
It’s clear that businesses need to be seriously focused on improving health. Our survival— quite literally—depends on that.
Is it even possible to reverse this trend of declining health? The answer is unquestionably yes. As much as 70% of all healthcare costs are thought to be the direct result of behavior and are preventable through lifestyle changes such as proper diet, exercise, quitting smoking and controlled alcohol consumption.
Equally significant is the fact that 74% of all costs are confined to four chronic conditions—cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes and obesity. And when you take a closer look at these four diseases, you see just how much progress is possible:
80% of cardiovascular disease and diabetes is preventable
60% of cancers are preventable
More than 90% of obesity is preventable
We may be a nation in seriously declining health, but with the proper systems in place we can choose not to be.
