Health Care Survey Reveals Interesting Stats

Hewitt and the National Business Group on Health's survey reveals five important insights into how employees and their dependents view health care. These insights are crucial for employers to recognize as they evaluate their present and future health care strategies. Help for prescription drugs is high on the list.

Workers know how to get healthy, but many aren't taking action. Most (84%) believe making smart choices in every day life leads to good overall health, and about three-quarters (72%) think good health is a consequence of getting regular preventive care. Only half of the employees think they do a great or good job of eating healthy, while less than half (46%) reported doing a great or good job of exercising on a regular basis. To help with the high prices of medicines, most employees surveyed ranked prescription program assistance extremely high.

Participation in health programs is low, but satisfaction is high. Workers and dependents say they might know what actions they need to take to get and stay healthy, but participation in many employer-provided health improvement programs is not as high as employers would like. Biometric screenings are the most popular programs with online health information tools and health risk questionnaires following closely. The least popular programs were stress management programs and employee assistance programs. For employees that had dependent coverage, a prescription program was the number one satisfying benefit.

Financial motivation is a strong factor in participation but non monetary, internal motivators can be just as effective. Many businesses presume that offering cash incentives in exchange for involvement will generate the best results and incent employees to participate in health care programs. Citing that it is "the right thing to do", close to half of all employees surveyed would complete a health risk questionnaire Twenty-nine percent would participate in a HRQ for an incentive and almost the same number would complete it if there was a penalty. In addition, 44% of the employees surveyed said they would be willing to participate in a wellness program furnished by their employer because "it is the right thing to do".