Promoting health versus curing illness - Editorial

Recognizing that health costs are best contained through prevention, employers and other health care buyers are promoting health because it's more cost effective than curing illness.

Wellness and health promotion are not new ideas, but businesses are taking their efforts to promote health to new levels. Take, for example, the work being done at General Electric in Lynn, Mass. Robert Galvin, M.D., GE's manager of health care management and medical services in New England, says in our "Perspective," page 64, "The ultimate measure of value in health care is how healthy our employees are." GE embarked on a data-collection effort to learn the effects of enrollment incentives and its managed care plan. What GE learned about its health plan and its employees was illuminating. See "GE sheds light on managed care's impact on health," page 48.

In our June issue, we ran an article on employee empowerment that detailed how several companies were enlisting their own workers in the war on health care costs. International Paper, in Purchase, N.Y.; the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco; and Quaker Oats, in Chicago, are encouraging employees to be more health-conscious and to be smarter shoppers.

Another example can be found among the many companies that use prenatal care programs, which are among the most inexpensive cost containment strategies to implement and can yield substantial savings. Home Depot, in Atlanta; Haggar Apparel, in Dallas; and First American Title Insurance Co., in Santa Ana, Calif., all have reported significant savings as a result of prenatal care programs. See "Prenatal care: A small investment begets a big return," May.

Earlier, we wrote about how the Union Pacific Railroad, Omaha, Neb., is promoting health among its workers. Using 1990 claims data, Union Pacific, working with Johnson & Johnson Health Management Inc., Santa Monica, Calif., found that it spent $87 million--or $439 per worker--treating illnesses that could have been prevented. See "Projecting the impact of health promotion on medical costs," Mid-March.

"There is no doubt in my mind that the way to cut costs is through prevention," says Robert Holmen, a health care consultant in St. Paul. "Everyone is searching for a magic bullet, and yet in most cases, it's right in front of us. The question is not whether we should prevent illness, but how."

The Clinton administration would do well to include health promotion in its health care reform plan. If Union Pacific, with 28,000 workers, could save $87 million, imagine what the entire U.S. population could save.

COPYRIGHT 1993 A Thomson Healthcare Company
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