Health Care Survey Reveals Interesting Statistics

How employees view health care is examined in a new survey done by the National Business Group and Hewitt. In order to plan their corporate health care plans, it is important to understand the results of the survey. Help for prescription drugs is high on the list. 

 

Many workers are not doing what they need to do to get healthy even though they know better. Seventy two percent of the employees surveyed feel that receiving regular preventive care will result in good health. An additional 84% think that making prudent decisions in their daily life will lead to overall good health. Only 46% of the workers surveyed reported doing a “great” or “good job” of regular exercising and only about half of the workers think they do a “great” or good job” of eating healthy. To assist with the high cost of prescription drugs, most employees surveyed rated prescription program assistance extremely high. 

 

Involvement in health programs is low, but satisfaction is high. Involvement in a lot of employer provided health programs isn’t as high as many employers would like to see, even though employees and their dependents report that they know what they need to do to get and stay healthy. The most accepted programs include biometric screenings (61%), followed by online health information tools (53%) and health risk questionnaires (41%). The least popular programs were stress management programs and employee assistance programs. For workers that had dependent coverage, a prescription program was the number one satisfying benefit.

 

Internal motivators can be just as effective as monetary ones. Frequently, businesses assume that providing financial incentives for participating in programs will increase participation. Nearly half would complete a health-risk questionnaire (HRQ) without any incentive because it is “the right thing to do”. About 30% of the individuals would complete a survey if there was a penalty for not doing so and an additional 30% would do it if there was a monetary incentive involved. Further, 44% of employees would participate in a wellness or health improvement program provided by their employer because it is the right thing to do.