Healthstat

Short Summary of Company:

“The men and women directly involved with improving employee health are at the heart of Healthstat’s singular commitment to wellness. Healthstat’s wellness-minded practitioners establish a more personal relationship with employees, while bringing a combination of compassion and expertise to employers’ existing healthcare programs.”

Materials Being Reviewed

Case study of Mt. Vernon Mills, in which Healthstat reports more than $2000/person/year in savings through risk reduction and mitigation.

 Summary of key figures and outcomes:

Questions for Healthstat:

You are claiming savings well in excess of $2000/person by Year 5, including fees. Since the average person only spends about $2000 on total hospitalizations (excluding birth events), wouldn’t this mean that you wiped out hospitalizations?

ANS: Refused to answer

The average person in an older workforce only spends about $200/year on wellness-sensitive medical events, offset by program fees and preventive expenses. How are you able to save $2000/year when there is only $200/year available to be saved from totally eliminating these events?

ANS: Refused to answer

What is your wellness-sensitive medical event rate for this population? If you don’t track it, why don’t you track it?

ANS: Refused to answer

Is it possible that since instead of comparing rates of wellness-sensitive medical events that you compared forecasted costs to actual costs, that mis-forecasting the costs is responsible for most of the improvement?

ANS: Refused to answer

You displayed the “top 20%” and “top 50%” to show their improvements. Would it be the case that had you displayed the bottom 20% and bottom 50%, their readings would have deteriorated over the period?

ANS: Refused to answer

How did you account for dropouts and non-participants, who presumably would not have shown good results and whose wellness-sensitive medical events might have increased?

ANS: Refused to answer

How can you reduce costs through wellness programs by $2000/year if cholesterol and blood pressure barely improved, even without offsetting those improvements with dropouts and non-participants?

ANS: Refused to answer

Date: June 16-21, 2014

Addendum: Email exchange

Healthstat:

Your questions do talk about wellness and savings, but do not necessarily focus on how our business model works. Therefore, they don’t make sense for us to answer them in the way they are presently written. We work with an insurance free onsite employee wellness center model that is HRA  and preventative wellness driven. Our cost savings are calculated from an insurance premium cost estimate for self-insured companies, as well as preventative treatments for those potentially at risk for more costly services.

They Said What? response:

 Based on your website, and also your email, you say you have a model that is “an employee wellness center” that is “preventative wellness driven” and you provide “preventative treatments for those potentially at risk.”  The questions are therefore quite pertinent in regard to your business model and boil down to one:  How does your “preventative wellness model” reduce wellness-sensitive/risk-sensitive medical events by $2000/person/year, when most companies only spend $200/person/year on wellness-sensitive medical events in the first place?