Health Screenings are not a Product

Posted by Chris Behling, President at Mollen

Screenings are not a Product and Health Fairs don’t Work!

It has only been within the past ten years that the biometric screening bandwagon left the station. In the early days, screenings were often offered as a perceived employee benefit and implemented in association with health fairs. The goal of these early screenings seemed to be to raise awareness of health concerns, educate employees about their health plan and other benefits, hand out tchotchkes, and demonstrate that the employer cares. Generally screenings were a “one and done event’” disconnected from any discernible health management strategy. These health fair screenings generated potentially valuable health data that often walked out the cafeteria door with the employee, rarely resulting in interventions to improve the health of the population.

Unfortunately, all too often, this is still the case.

Screenings are not a product. They are not a stand-alone event. They do not, (in and of themselves), improve the health of an employee population. A health fair does not an employee health management program make.

Instead, screenings are an integral and potentially indispensable part of a comprehensive and integrated employee health management process. When implemented as part of an overall health management program, biometric screenings allow employers to:

• Identify health risks both for individual employees and across the employee population
• Stratify a population to identify opportunities to improve health while addressing costs
• Structure benefit plan design to address identified risks
• Target health interventions to manage and mitigate identified risks
• Establish a baseline from which improvements can be measured (both individual and group)
• Tailor health management programs to individual employee needs
• Provide data to help motivate employees to take appropriate actions to improve their health
• Identify objective measures upon which incentive programs can be established

Screenings can provide invaluable data and insights that allow employers to implement intervention and incentive strategies to improve the health and well-being of their employees. But the value of screenings is only unlocked when they are integrated into overall health management strategy.
For the past several months, Mollen has been consulting with employers about the appropriate and effective use and implementation of biometric screenings. Mollen is very familiar with different screening approaches and methods including what can be screened, appropriate screening methods, key operational and regulatory considerations and best practices for evaluation and incentives.

Mollen is leading the way in pulling (or pushing) the industry toward the appropriate use of screenings where they are positioned not as a standalone event offered in the cafeteria at the annual health fair, but as the start of an ongoing employee health management process that can meaningfully improve the health of employees while reducing overall healthcare costs.