Coached to Healthy Living

Joe Pellegrini got yet another nagging phone call.  It was from his health coach, a woman working on behalf of his employer, Scotts Miracle-Gro Co.  The coach's prescription: "You need to lose weight and you really, really need to lower your cholesterol."

Pellegrini is a supply-chain executive at Scotts headquarters in Maryville, OH and is an Armani-swaddled triathlete who often cycles 36 miles to and from work.  Lose weight?  "Give me a break," he thought, "It's all muscle, folks."

But a time bomb was ticking beneath the taut physique.  Medical specialists working on behalf of Scotts had been scouring every aspect of Pellegrini's health.  His profile--athletic, high body-mass index, and bad cholesterol (brought on by a love of 28-ounce sirloins)-- triggered an alarm.

Eventually, Pellegrini succumbed to the company-applied pressure and agreed to abide by his health coach's action plan, which included an immediate visit to his doctor.  A few weeks later, a specialist studying Pellegrini's angiogram spotted the heart valve of what should have been a dead man.  Within hours, two stents were installed.  The surgeons later told him the 95% blockage would have killed him within five days.  "It was that close," Pellegrini says.

The new wellness fixation is happening at companies as varied as IBM, Microsoft, Harrah's Entertainment, and Scotts.  Companies save money.  Employees get healthier.  But the wellness craze raises important issues.

With a wellness program, no company wants to give managers an opportunity to discriminate against employees based on their health.  That means bringing in a third party to run the thing.  In 2005, Scotts hired Whole Health Management, that manages on-site primary care and fitness centers for dozens of corporations.  Whole Health aggregates health and insurance claim data so Scotts can forecast trends.  But individual data are kept strictly confidential.

Scotts employees are now urged to take exhaustive health-risk assessments.   Those who balk pay $40 a month more in premiums.  Using data-mining software, Whole Health analysts scour the physical, mental and family health histories of nearly every employee and cross-reference that information with insurance-claims data.  Health coaches identify which employees are at moderate to high risk.  All of them are assigned a health coach who draws up an action plan.  Those who don't comply pay $67 a month on top of the $40.

The wellness program, which costs $4 million a year to run, is a financial drain.  But the company expects it to pay for itself in three to four years.  Other large companies have seen a 3-to-1 return on investment in their wellness programs.

Source: BusinessWeek, February 26, 2007