eading-edge employers about
four years ago began asking their disease management program providers to apply
the same approach used for chronic conditions to the rest of the workforce. That
was a major factor in the integration of disease management and wellness programs,
says Chris Coloian, vice president of health advocacy products at Cigna Healthcare,
a division of Cigna Corp. based in Bloomfield, Connecticut.
"As they looked at what was working in the positive engagement
of folks with chronic conditions, they realized that that same kind of approach,
but less clinical and more behavioral and educational, could benefit the at-risk
or healthy," Coloian says.
At U.S. Preventive Medicine Inc. in McKinney, Texas, "many
clients were asking for a pre-diabetes and a pre-hypertension program," says Fred
Goldstein, president and COO.
To fulfill this need, Goldstein’s company, Specialty Disease
Management Services, merged with U.S. Preventive Medicine in October 2007. Then
the combined company launched its Prevention Plan pilot program in March using one
large and one midsize employer as test subjects, he says.
The program will be expanded nationwide in the second quarter
of this year, he says.
"We consider prevention both primary and secondary: first,
to keep somebody from getting a preventable condition and, secondarily, to keep
someone who has a chronic condition from getting worse," Goldstein says. "It’s really
about prevention for everyone, no matter where they are on the continuum of health."
FPL Group Inc., based in Juno Beach, Florida, became one of
the first employers to adopt an integrated approach to wellness and disease management
back in 2000, says Andrew Scibelli, manager of employee health and well-being at
the FPL Group, which is the parent company of Florida Power & Light.
"We have based our program philosophy on a continuum of care,"
he says. "At one end of the spectrum, you have the apparently healthy individuals;
at the other end, you have more of the catastrophic illness," such as accidents
or cancer.
Between the extremes "are those with chronic diseases and
the high-risk population that has exhibited those risk factors that indicate a high
probability of future illness," Scibelli says.
"Natural flow suggests that, during your lifetime, you are
going to go back and forth on that continuum," he says. "So we developed the model
to provide services, resources and programs to individuals no matter where they
fell on the continuum. It’s really a total concept of total health and well-being."
Workforce Management Online, May 2008
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