Business of Well-being

Saint Luke's Health System - Role Model' for Personal Health Improvement and Responsible Healthcare Consumption

Companies in the United States first introduced workplace wellness programs to reduce healthcare costs. As those programs matured, companies learned that nurturing employee health and wellness had benefits well beyond financial gains. Today, as a recent Towers Watson study puts it, "Employers are recognizing that good health is a total business issue and an essential factor for success."


That recognition drives the wellness program that the Saint Luke's Health System (SLHS) started in 1998 and has been enhancing ever since. Based in Kansas City, MO Miss., SLHS is a not-for-profit system of 10 hospitals that provide care for a metropolitan area of 2 million people throughout 67 counties in Missouri and Kansas.


The SLHS motto- "The Best Place to Get Care and the Best Place to Give Care" - commits the organization to excellence both in treating patients and in supporting its roughly 9,700 employees. "As healthcare providers, we see ourselves as role models to the communities we serve," said Megan Craven, of the SLHS Wellness and Benefits Strategy staff.


"We stress the importance of valuing personal health along with being a responsible healthcare consumer." The far-flung Saint Luke's system includes four metropolitan hospitals, four regional hospitals, a children's hospital and a behavioral health center; heart, neuroscience, and cancer institutes; hospice and home care staffs, rehab facilities, and multiple physician practices.


"As a 24/7, 365-days-a-year organization spread across multiple locations, it is a challenge to reach all employees and provide programming each employee can participate in," said Craven. The SLHS wellness coordinator, who is a registered dietitian, consults with system representatives including Employee Assistance Program staff and hospital chaplains to determine programming needs.


All SLHS employees and dependents - not just benefit-eligible employees - may participate in wellness programs. Offerings include monthly wellness web conferences; healthy food options in SLHS cafeterias; discounts on fitness center memberships; tobacco cessation and healthy pregnancy programs; disease management programs with prescription benefits; and health coaching sessions with nurses, exercise specialists, and nutrition experts.

Getting Fit Together Online

SLHS employees can also pursue wellness online via a web platform. "Employees use the platform to challenge and encourage their colleagues to participate in various nutrition, wellness, and physical activities," said Craven.


"They share recipes, favorite gyms, words of encouragement, and even set up times to meet over their lunch hour or breaks to get in an extra walk during the day." With the platform, employees can compete against one another to log steps walked, pounds lost, and other wellness metrics. SLHS offers four multi-week wellness challenges a year in which teams can compete, as well as weekly "bonus challenges" for individual participants.


The winners of the challenges are awarded Giving Cards that count as cash when donated to their favorite charities. In the past, Craven says, challenge team winners pooled their Giving Cards to support a program for children with disabilities, and to build a community walking trail. Mindful that different employees prefer to receive wellness program information in different ways, SLHS communicates through a variety of channels.


"The importance of wellness is communicated from the very beginning," said Craven. The company wellness coordinator greets new employees with a program overview at orientation. The company intranet website features a regularly-updated wellness page with recipes, health resources, and a calendar of program events.


At each hospital and facility in the system, a designated "wellness champion" is responsible for giving co-workers programming updates, and relaying feedback to the wellness coordinator. Employees also are sent weekly emails with programming updates and encouraging articles, such as the success stories of employees participating in the program.


Members of SLHS's executive team promote wellness activities by participating themselves, and sharing wellness tips and experiences with employees. Every year, Craven says, SLHS invites all employees to a web-conference Wellness State of the Union to hear how the program is faring.


In the presentation, she says, "SLHS is very transparent." Employees are briefed on how the company medical plan is performing, where they're making progress toward health and wellness goals, and what other strategies and activities they might try to improve results.


Wellness Efforts Tailored to Times

Although the SLHS wellness program has existed since 1998, it has changed with the times to meet workforce needs. "Initially, the focus was on employee engagement in their personal wellness," said Craven. "It has since transitioned to include spouses covered on the SLHS medical plan being engaged in their wellness."


The system helps employees with their healthcare costs - a 50 percent premium discount or a Health Savings Account contribution - if wellness criteria is met. Those criteria include both the employee and spouse completing an online Health Risk Assessment and getting a basic health exam at least every two years.


In 2003, Craven says, SLHS retooled its employee wellness program to take a "holistic approach" that encompassed emotional and spiritual, as well as physical well-being. In 2011, she says, "our strategy further evolved" so that the program now "has four balance points: physical, emotional, spiritual and financial."


Currently, SLHS is moving into "Phase III, where the goal is to improve the overall health and financial wellness of our employees as a whole - to shift the focus from an individual outcome to an SLHS population outcome," she said.


In this third phase, Craven says, entities within SLHS will compete each quarter to bring home the "Healthiest SLHS Entity" trophy. The prize will go to the entity that gets the most employees to meet wellness criteria, such as completing HRAs and exams, increasing 401(k) participation and savings, and getting preventive care services, such as a flu vaccination. Also in Phase III, she says, SLHS plans to reward responsible healthcare consumption by giving an award if the medical plan comes in under budget.


The wellness programming, communications and incentives are getting results, Craven says. In 2013, "our members controlled medical plan spending" and, by so doing, "have helped SLHS to continue to offer a competitive benefits package to employees," she says.


The online wellness platform has encouraged group participation, increased accountability among participants, and provided greater workplace morale. "It allows any employee, no matter their work schedule, to participate," said Craven. "And it also is a great means for senior leadership to be visible and show support of wellness programs to a greater number of employees with their participation."

The Measures of Success

The bottom line for a corporate wellness effort is whether it measurably enhances well-being - and by that measure, SLHS's program is succeeding, Craven says. During one challenge in 2012, more than 78 percent of people who completed the challenge in the weight-loss division lost weight - and nearly 19 percent of those completers lost 10 or more pounds. By the end of the competition, the percentage of overweight and obese participants was reduced by 3.5 percentage points, resulting in an estimated cost savings of more than $52,000 to the SLHS medical plan, Craven says.


In the programs for the first half of 2014, SLHS employees collectively took more than 287,455,680 steps, lost 678 pounds, and exercised more than 15,000 hours, according to Craven. During the last couple of fitness challenges, 17 individuals lowered their BMI status and more than 25 individuals each lost more than 10 pounds.


In the most recent challenge, in a period of just eight weeks, participants collectively took more than 154,400,000 steps. Along with the gratifying statistics, the wellness program has produced heartwarming personal testimonials. Craven says one participant reported losing 20 pounds and starting to participate in 5K and 10K races.


Another reported that "the team pressure to keep us out of our seat and on our feet has been my incentive to keep moving and watching what I eat." When program participants are making changes and having positive outcomes, Craven says, "their colleagues are encouraged and challenged to join in - and this impacts the population as a whole."


Taken together, Craven says, the data and testimonials from SLHS's wellness programs show they are doing what they're intended to do: "to provide our employees the tools and resources they need to improve and maintain their physical, emotional, spiritual, and financial well-being so that they can live happy and healthy lifestyles and also positively impact SLHS in their individual roles within the system."

About the Author

Elise Meyer is the senior communications manager at ShapeUp, a leading global provider of clinically-proven, social networking and incentives-based employee wellness programs.

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