Month: April 2018

The Missing Piece of Corporate Well-being—How We Treat Each Other

Healthcare

What has the greatest impact on employee well-being? Often when we hear the word “well-being” we instantly think of health screenings, nutritional education, fitness challenges, and online health risk assessments. But imagine you have the best-designed wellness program at your company.  Would your employees all be at their peak of health and productivity?

Consider my personal story. I worked at a wellness company—it was a lot of fun! Inside the company’s walls you saw daily company-wide walking breaks, ping pong tables in the break room, and a massive gym on-site. The whimsical environment came along with a mission to change people’s lives through improving their health. It wasn’t uncommon to see someone floating from reception to the call center on a skateboard. Your dog is snuggling at your feet below your desk. Sounds like the perfect recipe for a health utopia, right? 

Well get this—I gained weight while working at this wellness company. Why? Stress! Along with this fun environment came a lot of stress which was natural at any rapidly-growing startup. The stressful environment wasn’t because the company didn’t offer enough healthy programs and perks. We worked in a metaphorical test-kitchen for corporate wellness program best-practices. But none of this cancelled out the abundance of meetings where our days would be spent sitting in a chair, the long hours fixing issues, and a daily obsession with identifying who was responsible for these issues. There was frequent travel which increased pressure to get even more accomplished while in the office. And let’s not forget the ever-important foundation that how we treat each other in the workplace is essential to creating engaged, happy, high-performing teams. No wellness program can create this—the values exhibited by a company’s culture are strategic, deliberate, and are fostered by people from the top to the bottom of an organization. 

Well-being encompasses the whole person—not just a person’s body, but their mind as well. In this sense, a health check on company culture is just as important, and perhaps even more important, than offering programs to ensure physical health. An environment where employees are happy is one where there is respect for people. Emotionally healthy workplaces are marked by trust, kindness, and forgiveness. Hundreds of studies by pioneers of positive organizational psychology including Adam Grant at Wharton, and Jane Dutton and Kim Cameron at the University of Michigan, have found that a positive work culture characterized by humanity improves employee loyalty, engagement, productivity and performance. With three quarters of the U.S. workforce disengaged when they’re at work, how can we expect them to engage in the company’s wellness program? 

Even beyond considering an employee’s emotional well-being, stress in the work environment impacts physical health. A large study by Anna Nyberg at the Karolinska Institute found the link between a harsh boss and heart problems in employees. A separate study found that bad bosses significantly increase employees’ risk of heart attack. And after examining 279 different studies, the Journal of Applied Psychology linked an employee’s perception of unfairness at work to physical health. An unfair work environment was linked to mental health issues, sleep disorders, high blood pressure and obesity. 

There is an abundance of data that supports the link between a positive work environment and physical health.  So how do companies miss this when shaping their wellness strategy? Unfortunately in many cases we mislabel “work environment” as a place instead of a feeling. Creating a positive work environment could be mistaken for building a Zen space, adding a foosball table to your break room or instituting Puppy-Snuggle Fridays. In reality it might mean processing employee feedback, crafting a meaningful company culture, and making developing leaders a core competence. The most important step to improving employee health could be as simple as examining the employee experience. A work environment that fosters well-being gets to the core of workplace culture—how we treat each other

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 Shannon Shallcross is Co-Founder and CEO of BetaXAnalyticsa healthcare data consulting firm that helps employers to cut their healthcare spending through proven strategies to contain costs. 

For more insights on using data to drive healthcare, pharmacy and well-being decisions, follow BetaXAnalytics on Twitter @betaxanalytics, Facebook @bxanalytics and LinkedIn at BetaXAnalytics.

Medications that Don’t Work and Costs that Vary by 865%: Here’s What We Found Hiding in 1 Employer’s Healthcare Spending

Healthcare

Approximately $2 billion of employer-sponsored health care spending is wasted each year due to unnecessary or preventable costs across the continuum of care. This is approximately 20% of total health spending by employers each year, according to the American Health Policy Institute

Wasteful spending was a concern that one of our clients was facing when we met them. Their healthcare spending was increasing year over year in line with the healthcare industry trend, which is right now at +6% to +7% each year. Like most employers, a small group of people was driving a large percentage of their healthcare costs. And as, year over year, they were footing the gargantuan bill for their employees and their families, they were left with some very reasonable questions:

“Is the money we’re investing in our wellness program even making people healthier?”

“Is our diabetes-management program working?”

And, quite literally, the million dollar question…

“Where can we save on our healthcare costs?”

This employer partnered with us because of our team’s background in healthcare and wellness data science, as well as our team’s experience in advising large employers on their health spending strategy. We studied several years of their health and pharmacy data and we looked at this data by member status (employees, spouses, children) and by work location (corporate office, field offices, distribution center). We brought in absence data and we looked at the smoking status for each member. Here’s just a sampling of some of the highlights we found:

Diabetes is a major cost driver, but it could be costing less. Diabetes test strips, which were one of their top prescription drug cost-drivers, have costs that can vary by brand by up to 865%. The high cost variability of these test strips is not necessarily correlated to their quality. On one hand, an employer wants to make it as easy as possible for employees to access the diabetic supplies they need. However, without controls around this spending this could be a source of health spending leakage.

Members are not being driven to cost-effective medications. Pharmacy costs for diabetes medications were increasing year over year while medication adherence was decreasing. That right…the employer was paying more for less pills. What we found was that fewer people were taking their medications (adherence was decreasing). And of those who were taking their medications, they were being driven to the “preferred” brand of medication, but this brand was not the cheapest. This explains why they were paying more for less pills. This is also an indication that their medication formulary needs to be revised. 

An expensive method to quit smoking was not working. A costly and well-marketed medication to quit smoking was costing in excess of $63,000. When we examined adherence, very few of the people who took this medication completed treatment. This was most likely due to the medication’s unpleasant side effects. In fact, of the 58 people who started taking this medication, only 3 completed the recommended round of treatment. Clinical evidence indicates that 1 in 2 patients completing this therapy will quit smoking. This means that it cost this company $63,000 for 1 or 2 people to quit smoking. This expensive (and, in this case, ineffective) medication was on the plan’s preferred drug list. If the pharmacy plan had step therapy in place, people looking to quit smoking would be directed to use effective, yet less expensive medications before moving to more costly medications.

The Emergency Room is a cost-driver, while very few members use Urgent Care. Emergency Room visits were on average 4 times more costly than visits to Urgent Care. Not only were very few members ever using Urgent Care, there was a long list of Emergency Room “frequent flyers.” This informs the employer’s communication strategy on educating their members on the purpose of Urgent Care, as well as how to identify when a trip to the Emergency Room is necessary.

Employers typically have two goals when it comes to paying for employee healthcare: they want to support employees in improving their health, and they want to control costs. As a former veteran of the corporate wellness industry, I will be the first person to tell you that lots of companies will promise to make employees healthy and to save them money. Very few will actually deliver. This is because employers want a partner who will help them to control health costs, not just to deliver a program. 

Unfortunately, there’s no magic wand an employer can wave to suddenly reverse everyone’s chronic diseases. But there are many opportunities to ensure condition management programs have a positive return on investment. Furthermore, there are subtle clues hiding in their data that can show them areas where they are losing money where they shouldn’t. These are the many little holes where there’s healthcare spending leakage. It is our job is to find these holes for employers.

The good news for any employer looking to reduce wasteful health spending is that the insights we find are actionable. In this example, what we uncovered in this data is now being used by this employer to save money. Their Chief Human Resource Officer deserves enormous credit for not accepting the status quo with respect to their healthcare spending. He is among a growing number of HR professionals who understand that with the high cost of healthcare comes a responsibility to closely manage these costs. Their data drives a holistic strategy around health and wellbeing services that aligns with the strategy of the business. We are proud to partner with them to provide the actionable transparency they need to achieve their wellbeing goals.

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BetaXAnalytics is a healthcare data consulting firm that helps employers to cut their healthcare spending through proven strategies to contain costs. For more insights on using data to drive healthcare, pharmacy and wellbeing decisions, follow BetaXAnalytics on Twitter @betaxanalytics, Facebook @bxanalytics and LinkedIn at BetaXAnalytics.

How Much Personal Data Did I Give Up to Take This Facebook Quiz?

Data

I’m about to reveal a big secret about myself. I love a good Facebook quiz. Whether I’m finding out what I will look like in 20 years or what my leprechaun name is, it’s fun to do these mindless games on Facebook and compare results with friends. If you’ve ever done one of these, you know it’s easy–you click one button to agree to share information about yourself, information in your Facebook profile, and information on your Facebook friends. What could be the harm? We figure, “Of course this information is needed if we’re looking to find the accurate answer to ‘What will my Hollywood movie poster look like?'” It seems harmless, so we trust it.   

The Facebook platform collects massive amounts of data on us, and it does so in a brilliant way. Imagine having a stranger come knocking on your door and asking you for a list of all your family, your friends along with photos and everything you know about them.  No one would ever fall for this. But now that Facebook is such a familiar and popular way to connect with people, it doesn’t feel like a stranger to us. We “trust” Facebook, and we use it to store massive amounts of information about ourselves and the people we know. In fact, we trust it so much that when it comes to their “privacy agreement,” we agree to it without even reading its terms.

The reason why the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica debacle has people angry is because people assumed there was no risk in how their data from Facebook would be used. But in this case, to the shock of the world, Facebook exposed data on 50 million Facebook users to a researcher who worked at Cambridge Analytica. And, as another piece of the puzzle, Cambridge Analytica worked for the Trump campaign. So as the public is wielding pitchforks at Facebook’s door, the first lesson for us all is this:

#1: Any data that we’re publicly sharing will be used.

And once our data is out there, absent restrictions, we have little control over how it is being used. Data is valuable to companies, both in utility and in dollars. So when it comes to any platform that collects and stores any data on you, you can assume this data will be used in some way or sold to a 3rd party. 

#2: So much more of our personal data exists than what we realize.

It’s scary, I know. Data on you and me is everywhere. And if you have watched my talk for TEDxProvidence, you know how the amount of data we’re able to capture has increased exponentially in just the last 15 years. According to Google’s former CEO Eric Schmidt, the same amount of data created from the beginning of time to 2003 is what was generated in the last 2 days. 

Our data is used by marketers, by election strategists, by grocery stores, and by prescription drug companies. It’s used by every social media platform, and our data is used by their affiliated companies as well. Simply put, most companies are using our personal data in some way.

#3: Not only are most companies using our data, but the most successful companies are built on data. 

There are 13 companies in the S&P 500 that have managed to outperform the entire S&P 500 5 years in a row. The majority of these companies are “algorithmically driven,” meaning they gather data from their users and they update the consumer experience almost automatically. These are companies like Facebook, Amazon and Google. Global business investments in data and analytics will surpass $200 billion a year by the year 2020. In the future, we will see more and more businesses moving data to the core of their competitive strategy.

What does this mean to us? The time is right for the public to champion a universal code of ethics surrounding our data use.

#4: Our data should be protected by a common code of ethics.

Now that we have just a glimpse of what can happen when data is available unrestricted in the hands of others, we need to have a common set of rules to govern data use. DJ Patil, the first Chief Data Scientist for the White House, reminded us that “with great power comes great responsibility” in his February 2018 call to action “A Code Of Ethics for Data Science.” This post coincidentally was published over a month before the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica Scandal hit the press. The weighty responsibility of using data appropriately weighs on the minds of many within the data science community.

When my partners and I formed our company BetaXAnalytics, our founding principle is that we wanted to use the power of data “for good” to improve the cost and quality of healthcare in the United States. Since we had a deep experience in clinical and pharmacy data science, we knew there was a resounding need for ethical transparency for those who are paying for health services. We wanted to provide the actionable insight that our clients need to make decisions regarding healthcare services and care coordination.

Since my company BetaXAnalytics works with healthcare data, the way we protect data is governed by HIPAA; this legislation ensures both the privacy and safeguard of people’s health-related information. A large amount of our time and resources are put towards our focus of maintaining data security and privacy. The data we use is governed by strict contracts with our clients and we never sell data to third parties.

As a company whose business is built on interpreting health data, we live by the mantra “with great power comes great responsibility.” We hope to see this movement grow both within and outside the data science community to work towards using the powers of data “for good.”

 Shannon Shallcross is Co-Founder and CEO of BetaXAnalytics