Benefits – Risk Management 365

Five Steps to Safer Health Care

Patient safety is one of the Nation’s most pressing health care challenges. A 1999 report by the Institute of Medicine estimates that as many as 44,000 to 98,000 people die in U.S. hospitals each year as the result of lapses in patient safety.

Below are tips on what you can do to get safer health care. It was developed by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in partnership with the American Hospital Association and the American Medical Association.

1. Ask questions if you have doubts or concerns. Ask questions and make sure you understand the answers. Choose a doctor you feel comfortable talking to. Take a relative or friend with you to help you ask questions and understand the answers.

2. Keep and bring a list of ALL the medicines you take. Give your doctor and pharmacist a list of all the medicines that you take, including non-prescription medicines. Tell them about any drug allergies you have. Ask about side effects and what to avoid while taking the medicine. Read the label when you get your medicine, including all warnings. Make sure your medicine is what the doctor ordered and know how to use it. Ask the pharmacist about your medicine if it looks different than you expected.

3. Get the results of any test or procedure. Ask when and how you will get the results of tests or procedures. Don’t assume the results are fine if you do not get them when expected, be it in person, by phone, or by mail. Call your doctor and ask for your results. Ask what the results mean for your care.

4. Talk to your doctor about which hospital is best for your health needs. Ask your doctor about which hospital has the best care and results for your condition if you have more than one hospital to choose from. Be sure you understand the instructions you get about followup care when you leave the hospital.

5. Make sure you understand what will happen if you need surgery. Make sure you, your doctor, and your surgeon all agree on exactly what will be done during the operation. Ask your doctor, “Who will manage my care when I am in the hospital?” Ask your surgeon:

Exactly what will you be doing?
About how long will it take?
What will happen after the surgery?
How can I expect to feel during recovery?

Tell the surgeon, anesthesiologist, and nurses about any allergies, bad reaction to anesthesia, and any medications you are taking.

via Five Steps to Safer Health Care.

Adult Obesity

Obesity is common, serious, and costly. In 2009, about 2.4 million more adults were obese than in 2007. This epidemic has affected every part of the United States. In every state, more than 15% of adults are obese, and in nine states, over 30% of adults are obese. The medical care costs of obesity in the United States are staggering. In 2008 dollars, these costs totaled about $147 billion. More efforts are needed, and new federal initiatives are helping to change our communities into places that strongly support healthy eating and active living.

via CDC Vital Signs – Adult Obesity.

Get Regular Check-Ups

Remember to schedule regular health checkups. These can help identify a medical condition before symptoms appear. Your health plan probably recommends a schedule for wellness checkups based on age and sex. Discuss this with your healthcare provider because he or she might advise you to get some checkups sooner or more often if you are at risk for certain illnesses. Be sure that your wellness checkup includes all the recommended tests and procedures.

via Get Regular Check-Ups | The New Medicine.

The Affordable Care Act and Wellness Programs

Implementing and expanding employer wellness programs may offer our nation the opportunity to not only improve the health of Americans, but also help control health care spending.

The Affordable Care Act creates new incentives and builds on existing wellness program policies to promote employer wellness programs and encourage opportunities to support healthier workplaces. The Departments of Health and Human Services HHS, Labor and the Treasury are jointly releasing proposed rules on wellness programs to reflect the changes to existing wellness provisions made by the Affordable Care Act and to encourage appropriately designed, consumer-protective wellness programs in group health coverage. These proposed rules would be effective for plan years starting on or after January 1, 2014.

via The Affordable Care Act and Wellness Programs | HealthCare.gov.

What Are The Benefits Of A Health Risk Assessment?

Conducting a health risk assessment has several potential benefits including identifying health risk factors, controlling health care costs, predicting employee absenteeism, encouraging individuals to take a proactive stance when it comes to personal health care and monitoring the health status of the general population. Each of these factors can contribute to preventing future health problems. Health risk assessments are used by a wide range of groups and for a variety of reasons.

via What Are The Benefits Of A Health Risk Assessment? | LIVESTRONG.COM.

Benefits of Employee Recognition in the Workplace

When you have offices, departments and teams of loyal, committed, trained and qualified staff, you are reducing your risk. Give everyone an annual raise, make sure the air conditioning runs in the summer and the heat in the winter and voila… resignations will stop and retention is achieved. Right?

Wrong! Having an efficiently run work environment with comfortable temperatures and scheduled pay raises won’t be enough to retain your staff. It will be enough to get them to show up every morning — but to take initiative, meet schedules and deadlines, operate with a seriousness of purpose and drive — that requires relationship-building and employee recognition programs that work.

via Benefits of Employee Recognition in the Workplace: Reduced Risk & Raised Revenues | EHS Today | Safety content from EHS Today.

Safety and Health Add Value

Addressing safety and health issues in the workplace saves the employer money and adds value to the business. Recent estimates place the business costs associated with occupational injuries at close to $170 billion – expenditures that come straight out of company profits.

When workers stay whole and healthy, the direct cost-savings to businesses include:

lower workers’ compensation insurance costs;
reduced medical expenditures;
smaller expenditures for return-to-work programs;
fewer faulty products;
lower costs for job accommodations for injured workers;
less money spent for overtime benefits.

Safety and health also make big reductions in indirect costs, due to:

increased productivity;
higher quality products;
increased morale;
better labor/management relations;
reduced turnover;
better use of human resources.

Employees and their families benefit from safety and health because:

their incomes are protected;
their family lives are not hampered by injury;
they have less stress.

Simply put, protecting people on the job is in everyone’s best interest – our economy, our communities, our fellow workers and our families. Safety and health add value to businesses, workplaces and lives.

via Employee Health and Safety – SmallBusinessNotes.com.

Health Care Reform and Your Business

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010, otherwise known as “Obamacare” or the “Health Care Law,” affects small and large businesses in several ways. How the health care law affects your business depends on the number of people you employ, either full time or part time (not counting independent contractors).

Smaller Employers

Businesses that employ fewer than 25 full-time equivalent (FTE) employees may be eligible to receive a small business health care tax credit for providing health care coverage to employees. First, you must determine the number of full-time equivalent (FTE) employees, including each part-time employee as a percentage of a full-time employee. Then you must cover at least 50 percent of the cost of health care coverage for some of your employees, based on the single-person rate, and you must pay average annual wages below $50,000. If you meet all of these qualifications, you must apply on IRS Form 8941 (PDF) to receive the tax credit when you file your business tax return.

For Larger Employers

The health care law doesn’t “require” larger employers to provide health care to employees, but beginning in 2014 the law imposes penalties on businesses with over 50 employees that don’t provide “affordable” health care to employees. Here are the details of this portion of the law:

Starting in 2014, large businesses (those with 50 or more full-time workers) that do not provide adequate health insurance will be required to pay an assessment if their employees receive premium tax credits to buy their own insurance. These assessments will offset part of the cost of these tax credits. The assessment for a large employer that does not offer coverage will be $2,000 per full-time employee beyond the company’s first 30 workers.

To be deemed “affordable,” the health care insurance provided by the employer must pay for at least 60 percent of covered health care expenses, and employees may not be forced to pay more than 9.5 percent of their family income (before deductions and adjustments) for coverage offered by employers. The question of how an employer is supposed to know the amount of “family income” is not yet addressed.

If a business fails to provide any coverage or the coverage is deemed not to be affordable, the amount of the penalty is $2,000 per worker, but the first 30 workers are excluded from the calculation.

via Health Care Law and Your Business – Obamacare and Your Business.

2013 – the year of disease prevention and health promotion!

The New Year holds much promise for Total Worker Health™. In fact, 2013 may well become the year of disease prevention and health promotion! This abundance of opportunity can be credited to the Affordable Care Act and its provisions related to wellness programs.

The provision that focuses on employer wellness programs has the most potential to directly affect the Total Worker Health™ community. This proposed rule will expand the ability of employers to reward workers who achieve health improvement goals. Beginning in 2014, the health care law will allow employers to increase incentives for participation in programs that require an employee to achieve an agreed-upon wellness goal (health-contingent wellness programs). Specifically, employers will be able to increase incentives from the currently allowable 20% to as much as 30% of an employee’s insurance costs, and in some cases as much as 50%. Examples of health-contingent wellness programs include: programs that provide a reward to those who do not use, or decrease their use of, tobacco; programs that provide a reward to those who achieve a specified cholesterol level or weight. To protect employees from unfair practices, the proposed regulations will require health-contingent wellness programs to follow rules designed for employees who need wellness-related accommodations. Employers may continue to support “participatory wellness programs” which generally are available without regard to an individual’s health status. These include, for example, programs that reimburse for the cost of membership in a fitness center; that provide a reward to employees for attending a monthly, no-cost health education seminar; or that provides a reward to employees who complete a health risk assessment without requiring them to take further action.

via CDC – NIOSH – Total Worker Health™ in Action – January 2013.

The Employer’s Affordable Care Act – Your Pre-Game Warm-Up for “Pay or Play”

For many “large” employers, determining whether to “pay or play” may not be an easy process. The ACA’s employer shared responsibility provision goes into effect in 2014, making advance preparation even more important if you have part-time, seasonal or “variable hour” employees. Since you are only required to either potentially pay (a penalty for) or play (offer coverage to) those individuals who are considered your full-time employees, your ability to substantiate whether an employee is or is not “full-time” will be critical to successfully navigating the “pay or play” provisions of the ACA.

via The Employer’s Affordable Care Act (ACA) Compliance Playbook: Your Pre-Game Warm-Up for “Pay or Play” | Thorp Reed & Armstrong.