This column originally appeared in the Corporate Health and Wellness Association blog but they were asked to remove it by Springbuk, which did the original analysis.  Not because it is inaccurate — no inaccuracies have ever been pointed out despite multiple requests by me to do so — but because it was accurate.

So I’m re-posting it here.

This is a sequel to “Springbuk Wants Employees to Go to the Bathroom,” which should be read prior to reading this posting.

In wellness, it’s totally legal to lie to customers. Indeed, if you don’t, you’ll probably lose them, since your competitors are happy to do exactly that, and most customers aren’t going to notice anyway.

In securities, though, it is totally illegal to lie to shareholders or to pay someone to write a favorable but dishonest report on your product, with the intent of propping up the stock price.

This brings up to Fitbit, and a recent report on savings allegedly generated by their activity trackers, published by Springbuk. Let’s leave aside for a moment the value of activity trackers to users. I like mine enough to generally recommend they be offered and subsidized (not given away) as part of a corporate wellness program, but “like” is not the issue in this savings claim. The issue is whether the math works.

And it doesn’t.

The Springbuk report of savings and outcomes for Fitbit was impossible. Among the clinical issues is the study design itself: the report defines “active” as taking 100 steps a day. However, as the previous installment showed, it is impossible not to take 100 steps in a day without being so sick you can’t get out of bed. So rather than being the threshold for being counted as an “active” person, as the Springbuk study says, it should be the threshold for being a person who can get out of bed.  And of course, people who can get out of bed will by definition have lower healthcare costs than people who can’t get out of bed, whether or not they wear a Fitbit.

Among the mathematical issues, it is not possible to reduce costs by 45.6% (one of the claims made) with a fitness device, because in the working-age population, only about 5% of hospital admissions are caused by lack of fitness.

Further, in addition to the apparent mathematical and clinical impossibility of Springbuk’s results, the author — and Fitbit — refused to respond to the following query.

Hi Mr. Daniels,

I have some questions about your report. Perhaps I’ve gotten some things wrong, so I’d love to hear from you in the next 3 business days, if I have.

First, isn’t it the case that anyone who is not in a wheelchair walks at least 100 steps a day, Fitbit or no Fitbit?   Is that the threshold for “active” as opposed to “bedridden” ?

Second, Figure 2c indicates that the very fact of being in the “engaged” group, even if you never get out of bed, reduces costs by 30%+.  How is this possible?  A corollary:  It would seem that all savings is being attributed to Fitbit, at least in the Fitbit interpretation. They also seem to be taking credit for this: “266 employees who used their Fitbit tracker for at least half the duration of the program decreased their healthcare costs by 45.6% on average.”

Third, can you reconcile this statement…:

“The materials in this document represent the opinion of the authors and not representative of the views of Springbuk, Inc. Springbuk does not certify the information, nor does it guarantee the accuracy and completeness of such information.”

…with this statement:

“This demonstration of impact achieved by integrating Fitbit technology into an employee wellness program reinforces our belief in the power of health data and measurement in demonstrating ROI,” said Rod Reasen, co-founder and CEO of Springbuk. 

Fourth, how is it possible to show basically no separation for 182 days of getting out of bed (taking 100 steps a day) from being bedridden, but massive separation for getting out of bed for 274 days?  I can’t find the explanation of the exercise science that would lead to that result. It would seem that there is some huge physiological disadvantage to those extra 92 days of taking 100 steps.

Fifth, am I missing the disclosure that Fitbit paid you to do this study? I can’t find it anywhere. Or did you do this on a pro bono basis?

Sixth, would you have come up with this same result if you had been paid by a hedge fund that was shorting Fitbit stock and wanted to show no savings?

Seventh, since most wellness-related healthcare spending is unavoidable altogether by walking 100 steps a days or any other amount for 12 months, I’m wondering if you were able to determine approximately which elements of healthcare spending were reduced, in order to get a 45.6% reduction in costs?  You would have to wipe out all hospitalizations, for example – and get roughly a 10% reduction in everything else.

Thanks very much.  If you would like to reply, I’ll look forward to your reply by 5 PM EDT on Wednesday 5/24.

Assuming Fitbit paid Springbuk (that’s a big assumption — this obvious conflict of interest is not disclosed anywhere, so the reader has to decide whether Springbuk collected money, or whether they did this study out of the goodness of their heart), one of four outcomes is possible:

1. Springbuk genuinely thinks, among other things, that walking 100 steps a day for 274 days reduces healthcare costs by 27% vs. walking 100 steps a day for only 182 days. No crime there, other than the one committed by the grade school that granted them a diploma. It’s unlikely they think this, because Springbuk says they are  “obsessed with analytics” and that they sell “the leading health analytics software…[with] powerful insights.” So if Springbuk truly believes their own report, then congratulations are in order: they have accomplished more in this one analysis than most extremely stupid people accomplish in a lifetime. (Not an original line, as Veep fans know, but apropos nonetheless.)
2. Springbuk wanted to show savings because they were being well-paid to do so, but Fitbit put no pressure on them when they gave them the check. Once again, doesn’t say much for Springbuk’s ethics, but Fitbit did not commit a crime.
3. Fitbit paid Springbuk to lie for them, in order to impress prospects and customers. Once again, no crime. There wouldn’t be enough room in the prison system if lying in wellness were a crime. (See http://www.ethicalwellness.org for a list of wellness vendors that have agreed not to lie. It’s not very long.)
4. Fitbit paid Springbuk to lie for them, in order to inter alia impress investors. This is not legal, any more than if Fitbit made up their own data for that reason. Since many Fitbit analyst reports make reference to savings of “up to $1500 per employee per year,” and since this study appears to be one of only two justifications for that statement (the other being equally suspect), there is a case to be made that Fitbit’s stock price would indeed be lower if they told the truth: that no disinterested researcher has ever found more than a trivial impact on employee health status or healthcare insurance cost.

We don’t know which of these four is the case. Is Springbuk dishonest, or just incompetent? Does Fitbit genuinely believe that wearing their device could magically reduce healthcare costs for US corporations by hundreds of billions of dollars, or are they willing to lie in order to boost revenues and their share price?

We look forward to hearing the answers to these questions once the financial media gets hold of this posting.

Header Photo – Copyright: dzejmsdin / 123RF Stock Photo

Opinions expressed in this column are those of Al Lewis individually. They do not necessarily represent the views of the Corporate Health and Wellness Association. Therefore all threats of lawsuits should be directed to the former, to which I say: “Go ahead. Make my day.”