Insurance companies: start doing something to enhance the wellness of the employees of the companies you cover!! In the USA alone, 3/4 of the healthcare spending goes to treat chronic diseases. This is roughly 1.3 trillion USD!! The economic value pales in comparison with the losses suffered in the workforce, their families and the also the company value for the overall loss in human capital.

Healthcare providers (including insurance companies via their Group Employee Benefits BU)

seeking a roadmap to richer reimbursement should begin with value-based healthcare priorities: 1) Population health management 2) Care coordination 3) Integrated care delivery 4) e-Health and tele-health 5) Access to care 6) Health and wellness

Instead some large employers are addressing by themselves the challenge whilst instead they should be cooperating more closely with the insurance

companies and healthcare providers who benefit from covering the healthcare policies of their human capital. Moreover, it would so much smarter from the insurance companies GEB (Group Employees Benefits) develop content marketing programs and coordinate activities with healthcare providers and their large clients (the employers) to orchestrate the roadmap and address the challenges from awareness to prevention to integrated care and overall wellness. It should be almost a pre-requisite from an employer to choose an insurer that has the best wellness worksite-marketing program instead of leaving the matter to procurement and HR functions that traditionally look at cost first, and then case-by-case decide what do in the aftermath.    

     Since studies, research and empirical results have shown that these programs are effective in prevention, employee`s engagement & advocacy, and overall improvement in wellness, it should be mandatory to select providers based also on a “beauty contest” and not only mere cost savings, which in any case, they are short term valuation of how they appreciate human capital value.

       In the above illustration you can find just some examples of what a small percentage of the employers are doing right, right now in the USA alone, and the sky is the limit IF they worked side

by side with the insurance companies and other healthcare providers. This should be a wake up call for insurers – however – when presented with worksite marketing plans, most GEB heads and their CEOs focus merely on silly billboards to build awareness and sell more policies. Besides their lack of care towards their insured customers, the insurance companies are missing the largest opportunity of developing their customer base knowledge and therefore cross and up-sell other products and services to (hopefully) tailor better the needs of their customer whilst fostering loyalty. I could provide you exact value numbers of the missed sales opportunity for insurers but I must respect the confidentiality of the companies I worked for. it just takes a sensitive and smart CEO to crowd out most of its competitors, and short term results are the nemesis of long term returns as well as doing some good for once. I am hopeful that with the surge in wearable technologies, consumer health awareness and consciousness will increase, and the human capital of small to large corporations will start demanding better solutions and programs to improve overall their wellness, which is ultimately a win-win-win for employers, employees and the ecosystem of the companies that serve them. This article was written by Giovanni Montesanti based on the info graphic and article written by Melanie Matthews for HIN.