How Disease Management Led the Way

Feature: Lines Blurring in Wellness, Disease Management Services

How Disease Management Led the Way
Employers began asking their disease management providers to apply the approaches used for chronic conditions to the rest of the workforce. In so doing, they could reach employees who were either at risk for illness or who could simply be healthier.
By Joanne Wojcik

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."

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Joanne Wojcik is a senior editor for Business Insurance magazine. E-mail editors@workforce.com to comment.