The traditional wellness model was widely embraced 10 years ago in response to rising healthcare costs, a growing number of unhealthy employees and the healthcare system’s focus on “sick care.” Today, the broader world of healthcare has started to impact how employers view wellness. The focus on wellness has expanded to include many dimensions of population health management including keeping healthy populations healthy, identifying risk factors for chronic conditions, managing conditions to reduce costs, and coordinating care amongst stakeholders.
The mindset of the employed population is changing too. Employees are much more likely to prioritize their well-being than they were in the past, particularly younger generations. Younger workers are also more willing to wear technology to track and monitor their health, fitness and vital signs.
Employers are leveraging these broad population health trends to improve their corporate wellness programs. For example, large organizations including Boeing, Intel and Lowes have engaged with new healthcare structures, such as Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) and regional centers of excellence to receive the right care at the right time.
BioIQ helps employers embrace population health by aligning wellness programs with current offerings from healthcare institutions including health plans, pharmacies, labs, case managers, centers of excellence and ACOs. Population health is an ongoing process. Risks and demographics change continually, with many stakeholders now analyzing care gaps on a monthly basis—instead of annually as they did with yesterday’s wellness programs.
Tune in to this year’s Top Wellness and Population Health Trends webinar to learn about these and other trends that will disrupt population health in 2016 – and beyond.