Staywell, Mercer

Short Summary of Intervention:

Comprehensive wellness program offered to all American employees of British Petroleum.   Staywell was the vendor. Mercer was hired by British Petroleum to validate the savings claimed by Staywell.

Materials Being Reviewed

•  Staywell and Mercer Analysis of British Petroleum Program
• The Health Care Blog Review of British Petroleum Wellness Program

Summary of key figures and outcomes:

No visuals were provided. A review of the articles is recommended.

Questions for Staywell and Mercer

You claimed that spending would have increased by 10.5% instead of 7% across the entire company, absent the wellness program. Since only 1139 people reduced their risk factors (not including non-participants and dropouts whose risk factors might have increased), are you saying that by reducing a risk factor, those 1139 people were responsible for the entire difference in trend for the 62,000 employees and dependents versus the original trend you projected?

ANS: Refused to answer

The savings you are claiming works out to about $17,000 for each person whose risk factors declined, almost the equivalent of avoiding one heart attack for each person who reduced a risk factor. Are you suggesting that most of those 1139 would have had heart attacks otherwise, even though fewer than 200 American BP employees had a heart attack the previous year?

Note to Staywell’s and Mercer’s actuaries: if costs decline $17,000 every time someone reduces a risk factor and your spending is about a third of that level, you can wipe out your healthcare bill by getting a third of your employees to reduce a risk factor.

ANS: Refused to answer

How does $17,000 in savings for BP employee reducing a risk factor reconcile with Staywell’s own website claiming only $100 in savings for each person reducing a risk factor in a multi-employer study?

ANS: Refused to answer

How does this unprecedented savings reconcile with the PepsiCo findings, published in a leading journal (Health Affairs) by leading researchers (RAND), that concluded applying approximately the same interventions to PepsiCo’s workforce using the same consulting firm (Mercer) actually lost money?

ANS: Refused to answer

Did Mercer notice the discrepancy between Staywell’s alleged results and PepsiCo’s (and also Staywell’s own website) and inform British Petroleum of it, since Mercer’s job was to validate this program on behalf of British Petroleum and ensure that the savings were accurate?

ANS:  Refused to answer

Since a wellness program can only reduce wellness-sensitive medical events, how come you elected not to disclose the rate of wellness-sensitive medical events across the entire population before and after the program?

ANS:  Refused to answer

Did you inform British Petroleum that there was an article on The Health Care Blog about their program that reached the opposite conclusion you reached?

ANS: Refused to answer

Staywell employees Jessica Grossmeier (who authored the journal article) and Paul Terry (Chief Science Officer) were asked privately and by many of the people who posted comments to rebut The Health Care Blog and declined. Wouldn’t it have been a useful discussion to explain to readers how British Petroleum could have saved more than 100 times what you yourself said was possible?

ANS: Refused to answer