October 29, 2007
Getting better | Bangor-area businesses team up to make their employees healthier
Six years ago, business owners in the Bangor area moped about the results of a regional health report. Obesity rates had risen, smokers puffed compulsively, chronic disease ran rampant and many people spent far too much time on their sofas.
Jerry Whalen, vice president of business development at Eastern Maine Healthcare Systems, a Brewer-based network of hospitals and health care facilities, remembers company managers declaring in response to the presentation: "Those are our employees. Those are our health care costs."
One of the managers paying close attention was Bangor Letter Shop owner Irv Marsters. Insurance premiums at his small business were bruising his bottom line. After reaching out to other businesses to gather support, Marsters and Whalen approached the Bangor Region Chamber of Commerce to ask whether it would form a nonprofit affiliate focused on employee health. It agreed.
And so the Bangor Region Wellness Council, a network of paying businesses overseen by a full-time registered nurse, was launched in 2002 to help local companies prod employees to adopt better habits.
After working with the council to establish his own in-house wellness program, Marsters recalls how one employee who had not seen a doctor in years made a call to a physician after being urged to do so by the program coach. The employee discovered he had colon cancer as well as high blood pressure. Both ailments were treated, and two and a half years later Marsters says the employee is cancer free and on medications to regulate his blood pressure.
"We are more than delighted to spread the word [about wellness programs]," Marsters says. "We're passionate about it here."
The passion seems to be contagious. In the five years since 11 business leaders founded the Bangor Region Wellness Council, 79 companies, representing 26,000 employees, have signed up. And an updated report on the region's overall health, released this summer by EMHS, showed marked improvement in a number of areas.
The situation in Bangor is unique, and not just for its improving scorecard ˆ an anomaly among rural American communities. While businesses around Maine and the country have established wellness programs to deflate ballooning healthcare and insurance costs, those wellness programs are typically organized by community clinics, insurance firms or medical programs. The city stands out for its business-driven health kick.
That's been the key for the Bangor Region Wellness Council. "For it to survive, it had to come out of the business community," Marsters says. "It was not acceptable for it just to be a hospital and nonprofit operation. In order to get a wellness workplace program in place, with real results in the business, it had to be business driven."
Plus, businesses are well-positioned to entice people to better health. They can offer staffers financial incentives to join a gym, eat more leafy-green vegetables, kick a tobacco habit or do more yoga to quell stress. And don't forget the power of a few greenbacks: A study published in the September issue of the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine found that cash rewards worked better than healthy cafeteria meals or onsite fitness centers to coax employees into shedding weight.
Katrin Teel, the Bangor Region Wellness Council's director, says, "The success of the Bangor Region Wellness Council really comes from business leaders who put in time, energy and resources to make this a healthier region for everyone. They put competition aside to promote health and wellness in the workplace."
And all the work the council, its member businesses and the thousands of employees have done is having a remarkable impact. Bangor on the whole is healthier, according to a recent hospital survey. The city's obesity rate has declined, tobacco use has fallen and sedentary lifestyles are on the wane. And businesses are breathing a sigh of relief that their medical costs are under control.
Blooming statistics
Several years after Eastern Maine Healthcare Systems published its first alarming health report on rural Maine, Bangor is growing hardier. And the only factor anyone can point to as a possible explanation for the city's turnaround is the Bangor Region Wellness Council.
Ronald Deprez, executive director of the University of New England's Center for Health Policy, Planning and Research, was hired by EMHS to conduct two health needs assessment surveys in 2001 and 2006 in northern, central and eastern Maine. Although Deprez says he has not directly linked the council to Bangor's statistics, he figures the council should receive at least partial credit. "One of the things that has happened in Bangor is the wellness community, and how encompassing it is and how many firms are involved," he says.
Because the study followed the preliminary report five years prior, the center was able to track changes in categories like obesity, tobacco use, exercise and chronic disease in the nine counties that EMHS serves. With more than 500,000 total residents, the study areas comprise nearly 40% of Maine's total population.
In the updated report released July 24, Bangor was the lone study area to see a drop in obesity, at 2.5%. The six other areas shot up in this category anywhere from 2.1% to 10%. Bangor also reported an 8.1% drop in smoking, a 6.4% decline in sedentary lifestyles, and a tiny 0.7% increase in chronic conditions, which was far less than what other regions experienced. For example, the study area incorporating Dover-Foxcroft, Millinocket, Lincoln and Greenville reported an 8.2% jump in residents with three or more chronic diseases such as diabetes, heart disease or asthma.
Some attribute the drops in those figures to increased efforts at local companies to keep workers in good health. Pittsfield-based Cianbro Corp., for example, offers its employees a discount in medical coverage if they agree to regularly meet with a health educator to evaluate their not-so-salubrious lifestyle choices, explains Rita Bubar, Cianbro's corporate human resources manager. The savings for singles works out to be more than $600 a year; for families it's more than $1,600. Put another way, Cianbro has been chipping in 15% more per paycheck to cover health insurance for participating employees, Bubar says, increasing its contribution from 65% to 80%.
This year, however, the company stepped up pressure. Now, participating in the program garners workers just a five-percent reduction in their health care costs. Then, if they meet three of four criteria set by the company ˆ quitting smoking and maintaining their body-mass index, cholesterol and blood pressure at certain levels ˆ they receive an additional 10% reduction. "People can't just be in the program and give it lip service, or just go to the meetings and collect money without doing anything," Bubar says. Currently, 83% of the staff participates.
The payback for Cianbro has been controlling runaway medical costs. Cianbro, a self-insured company, watched its medical claims double from $2.5 million to $5 million from 1996 to 2001. With the introduction of the Healthy Lifestyle Program in 2002, Bubar says that growth has slowed considerably. For instance, last year's costs were $11.7 million, and this year they're predicted to be $12 million.
Medical claims are still growing, though, for several reasons. For starters, Cianbro, like many Maine companies, has an aging workforce. As employees get older, they are more likely to develop catastrophic health problems, such as cancer or heart disease. What's more, health care costs continue to rise. "Medical inflation is outpacing regular inflation, particularly in the northeast," Bubar said.
Dan Dauphinee, operations manager of Northeastern Log Homes in Kenduskeag, proudly rattles off his company's stats: From 2002 to 2006, eight percent of workers improved their blood pressure; 22% of employees lowered cholesterol; eight percent quit tobacco; and seven percent reported less stress. Out of a staff of 110, about 83 employees participate in the company's wellness program. (Dauphinee says that the bulk of those not participating are healthy young males who think they're "invincible.")
The company's incentive is simple: if employees have health insurance through the company and agree to the healthy lifestyle program, they receive a reduction in their health insurance costs by $11 a week, or $30 a week for families, paid for by the company. "The requirements are that you have a health-risk assessment annual through the company, on company time, with a coach assigned to you to evaluate your needs," Dauphinee says. "We decided to invest in this because of our high insurance premiums and high inflation rates."
Motivated managers
Businesses pay $365 a year to join the Bangor Region Wellness Council. On top of that, the Council is funded by a $25,000 annual donation from Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield and additional support by other companies.
Businesses see the investment in health as good for their bottom lines, and more importantly, good for their people. Northeastern Log Homes puts three percent of its health insurance premium, or about $24,000 per year, into its workplace wellness program. "We've kept our costs down," says Dauphinee. "The increases have been in the single digits [annually]. It's a struggle to hold them in the single digits, but if we can keep these to inflation, that's a success."
Northeastern Logs purchases health insurance through Anthem, which assesses the company based on its history of medical claims and on a broader community rating, allowing it some sway over what it pays in insurance premiums. Smaller firms, like Irv Marsters' Bangor Letter Shop, are more at the mercy of community-rated insurance plans. Marsters says that a couple years ago, because of fast-rising health care costs, he took the plunge and adopted a high-deductible health insurance policy, ramping up the deductible by $2,000 for each employee to $2,500. "And that was kind of scary for both us and our employees," he says.
But the savings reached $11,000 the first year. Marsters says he gave that money back to his employees by covering the first $500 of their medical expenses. The following year, because he had greater savings, he covered the first $750. The company also spends roughly $168 per employee in its wellness program.
"The health coach comes in twice a month, and any employee can come in and sign up to talk to the health coach about anything that might be on his mind, or to do with his family," Marsters says. The coach can also seek out employees who haven't checked in for a while to keep tabs on previously discussed health problems.
Amy Purington, a 39-year-old mother of two and employee of Bangor Letter Shop, says, since signing up for her company's wellness program, she's lowered her blood pressure and is making healthier food purchases. "It's given me more perspective on what types of food I should eat and the amounts of what I eat," she says.
Moreover, she's imparted her knowledge to her kids, ages nine and 12. "They try to eat better and healthier," says Purington. "We try to get in a lot of walking."
Jerry Whalen, vice president of business development at Eastern Maine Healthcare Systems, a Brewer-based network of hospitals and health care facilities, remembers company managers declaring in response to the presentation: "Those are our employees. Those are our health care costs."
One of the managers paying close attention was Bangor Letter Shop owner Irv Marsters. Insurance premiums at his small business were bruising his bottom line. After reaching out to other businesses to gather support, Marsters and Whalen approached the Bangor Region Chamber of Commerce to ask whether it would form a nonprofit affiliate focused on employee health. It agreed.
And so the Bangor Region Wellness Council, a network of paying businesses overseen by a full-time registered nurse, was launched in 2002 to help local companies prod employees to adopt better habits.
After working with the council to establish his own in-house wellness program, Marsters recalls how one employee who had not seen a doctor in years made a call to a physician after being urged to do so by the program coach. The employee discovered he had colon cancer as well as high blood pressure. Both ailments were treated, and two and a half years later Marsters says the employee is cancer free and on medications to regulate his blood pressure.
"We are more than delighted to spread the word [about wellness programs]," Marsters says. "We're passionate about it here."
The passion seems to be contagious. In the five years since 11 business leaders founded the Bangor Region Wellness Council, 79 companies, representing 26,000 employees, have signed up. And an updated report on the region's overall health, released this summer by EMHS, showed marked improvement in a number of areas.
The situation in Bangor is unique, and not just for its improving scorecard ˆ an anomaly among rural American communities. While businesses around Maine and the country have established wellness programs to deflate ballooning healthcare and insurance costs, those wellness programs are typically organized by community clinics, insurance firms or medical programs. The city stands out for its business-driven health kick.
That's been the key for the Bangor Region Wellness Council. "For it to survive, it had to come out of the business community," Marsters says. "It was not acceptable for it just to be a hospital and nonprofit operation. In order to get a wellness workplace program in place, with real results in the business, it had to be business driven."
Plus, businesses are well-positioned to entice people to better health. They can offer staffers financial incentives to join a gym, eat more leafy-green vegetables, kick a tobacco habit or do more yoga to quell stress. And don't forget the power of a few greenbacks: A study published in the September issue of the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine found that cash rewards worked better than healthy cafeteria meals or onsite fitness centers to coax employees into shedding weight.
Katrin Teel, the Bangor Region Wellness Council's director, says, "The success of the Bangor Region Wellness Council really comes from business leaders who put in time, energy and resources to make this a healthier region for everyone. They put competition aside to promote health and wellness in the workplace."
And all the work the council, its member businesses and the thousands of employees have done is having a remarkable impact. Bangor on the whole is healthier, according to a recent hospital survey. The city's obesity rate has declined, tobacco use has fallen and sedentary lifestyles are on the wane. And businesses are breathing a sigh of relief that their medical costs are under control.
Blooming statistics
Several years after Eastern Maine Healthcare Systems published its first alarming health report on rural Maine, Bangor is growing hardier. And the only factor anyone can point to as a possible explanation for the city's turnaround is the Bangor Region Wellness Council.
Ronald Deprez, executive director of the University of New England's Center for Health Policy, Planning and Research, was hired by EMHS to conduct two health needs assessment surveys in 2001 and 2006 in northern, central and eastern Maine. Although Deprez says he has not directly linked the council to Bangor's statistics, he figures the council should receive at least partial credit. "One of the things that has happened in Bangor is the wellness community, and how encompassing it is and how many firms are involved," he says.
Because the study followed the preliminary report five years prior, the center was able to track changes in categories like obesity, tobacco use, exercise and chronic disease in the nine counties that EMHS serves. With more than 500,000 total residents, the study areas comprise nearly 40% of Maine's total population.
In the updated report released July 24, Bangor was the lone study area to see a drop in obesity, at 2.5%. The six other areas shot up in this category anywhere from 2.1% to 10%. Bangor also reported an 8.1% drop in smoking, a 6.4% decline in sedentary lifestyles, and a tiny 0.7% increase in chronic conditions, which was far less than what other regions experienced. For example, the study area incorporating Dover-Foxcroft, Millinocket, Lincoln and Greenville reported an 8.2% jump in residents with three or more chronic diseases such as diabetes, heart disease or asthma.
Some attribute the drops in those figures to increased efforts at local companies to keep workers in good health. Pittsfield-based Cianbro Corp., for example, offers its employees a discount in medical coverage if they agree to regularly meet with a health educator to evaluate their not-so-salubrious lifestyle choices, explains Rita Bubar, Cianbro's corporate human resources manager. The savings for singles works out to be more than $600 a year; for families it's more than $1,600. Put another way, Cianbro has been chipping in 15% more per paycheck to cover health insurance for participating employees, Bubar says, increasing its contribution from 65% to 80%.
This year, however, the company stepped up pressure. Now, participating in the program garners workers just a five-percent reduction in their health care costs. Then, if they meet three of four criteria set by the company ˆ quitting smoking and maintaining their body-mass index, cholesterol and blood pressure at certain levels ˆ they receive an additional 10% reduction. "People can't just be in the program and give it lip service, or just go to the meetings and collect money without doing anything," Bubar says. Currently, 83% of the staff participates.
The payback for Cianbro has been controlling runaway medical costs. Cianbro, a self-insured company, watched its medical claims double from $2.5 million to $5 million from 1996 to 2001. With the introduction of the Healthy Lifestyle Program in 2002, Bubar says that growth has slowed considerably. For instance, last year's costs were $11.7 million, and this year they're predicted to be $12 million.
Medical claims are still growing, though, for several reasons. For starters, Cianbro, like many Maine companies, has an aging workforce. As employees get older, they are more likely to develop catastrophic health problems, such as cancer or heart disease. What's more, health care costs continue to rise. "Medical inflation is outpacing regular inflation, particularly in the northeast," Bubar said.
Dan Dauphinee, operations manager of Northeastern Log Homes in Kenduskeag, proudly rattles off his company's stats: From 2002 to 2006, eight percent of workers improved their blood pressure; 22% of employees lowered cholesterol; eight percent quit tobacco; and seven percent reported less stress. Out of a staff of 110, about 83 employees participate in the company's wellness program. (Dauphinee says that the bulk of those not participating are healthy young males who think they're "invincible.")
The company's incentive is simple: if employees have health insurance through the company and agree to the healthy lifestyle program, they receive a reduction in their health insurance costs by $11 a week, or $30 a week for families, paid for by the company. "The requirements are that you have a health-risk assessment annual through the company, on company time, with a coach assigned to you to evaluate your needs," Dauphinee says. "We decided to invest in this because of our high insurance premiums and high inflation rates."
Motivated managers
Businesses pay $365 a year to join the Bangor Region Wellness Council. On top of that, the Council is funded by a $25,000 annual donation from Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield and additional support by other companies.
Businesses see the investment in health as good for their bottom lines, and more importantly, good for their people. Northeastern Log Homes puts three percent of its health insurance premium, or about $24,000 per year, into its workplace wellness program. "We've kept our costs down," says Dauphinee. "The increases have been in the single digits [annually]. It's a struggle to hold them in the single digits, but if we can keep these to inflation, that's a success."
Northeastern Logs purchases health insurance through Anthem, which assesses the company based on its history of medical claims and on a broader community rating, allowing it some sway over what it pays in insurance premiums. Smaller firms, like Irv Marsters' Bangor Letter Shop, are more at the mercy of community-rated insurance plans. Marsters says that a couple years ago, because of fast-rising health care costs, he took the plunge and adopted a high-deductible health insurance policy, ramping up the deductible by $2,000 for each employee to $2,500. "And that was kind of scary for both us and our employees," he says.
But the savings reached $11,000 the first year. Marsters says he gave that money back to his employees by covering the first $500 of their medical expenses. The following year, because he had greater savings, he covered the first $750. The company also spends roughly $168 per employee in its wellness program.
"The health coach comes in twice a month, and any employee can come in and sign up to talk to the health coach about anything that might be on his mind, or to do with his family," Marsters says. The coach can also seek out employees who haven't checked in for a while to keep tabs on previously discussed health problems.
Amy Purington, a 39-year-old mother of two and employee of Bangor Letter Shop, says, since signing up for her company's wellness program, she's lowered her blood pressure and is making healthier food purchases. "It's given me more perspective on what types of food I should eat and the amounts of what I eat," she says.
Moreover, she's imparted her knowledge to her kids, ages nine and 12. "They try to eat better and healthier," says Purington. "We try to get in a lot of walking."
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