Health Care Survey Reveals Interesting Stats
Hewitt and the National Business Group on Health’s survey reveals five main insights into how employees and their dependents view health care. In order to plan their company health care strategies, it is key to understand the results of the survey. Help for prescription medicines is high on the list.
Despite the fact that workers say they might know how to get healthy, many are not taking action to do so. Seventy two percent of the employees surveyed think that receiving regular preventive care will result in good health. Another 84% think that making wise decisions in their daily life will lead to overall good health. Only half of the workers think they do a great or good job of eating healthy, while less than half (46%) reported doing a great or good job of exercising on a regular basis. To help with the expensive cost of medicines, most workers surveyed ranked prescription program assistance very high.
In spite of high satisfaction in health programs, participation remains low. Workers and dependents say they might know what actions they need to take to get and stay healthy, but involvement in many employer-provided health improvement programs is not as high as employers would like. Biometric screenings are the most popular programs with online health information tools and health risk questionnaires following closely. The least popular programs were stress management programs and employee assistance programs. For employees that had dependent coverage, a prescription program was the number one satisfying benefit.
Internal motivators can be just as effective as financial ones. Many employers presume that offering cash incentives in exchange for participation will generate the best results and incent workers to participate in health care programs. Citing that it is “the right thing to do”, close to half of all workers surveyed would complete a health risk questionnaire Twenty-nine percent would participate in a HRQ for an incentive and almost the same number would complete it if there was a penalty. In addition, 44% of the employees surveyed said they would be willing to participate in a wellness program provided by their employer because “it is the right thing to do”.