1. Apologies for the blurry screen shots.  We opted to cut-and-paste directly because otherwise no one would believe this stuff…
2. You should also link to the “Smoking Guns”  and Golden Squirrel Awards –plenty more hilarity watching vendors try to out-stupid one another
3. We’ve linked on the allusions you may not recognize because you are too old or too young

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WellnessFactors presents: Wellness Fit for a King

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Beware of Vendors Bearing Gifts

However, according to the Journal of the American Medical Association and the New England Journal of Medicine, checkups do more harm than good…

…which may possibly be why both the National Institutes of Health and the American College of Physicians — the people who make the actual money doing these checkups — recommend against annual physicals.

There are good reasons to go to the doctor. The earth completing a revolution of the sun is just not one of them.

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We Bet Enron’s Wellness Program Saved Even More Money

Navistar perpetrated the second-biggest accounting scandal of the decade, getting thrown off the stock exchange, firing successive CFOs, writing off $4-billion, and suing its auditors. But their wellness program still saved a whopping 400-to-1 in”direct and indirec [sic] costs.”

In the immortal word of the great philosopher Rick Perry, oops.  The ROI didn’t “exceed 400-to-1” that “easily” because after the impossibility of that ROI was pointed out, 90% of it disappeared, not unlike the aforementioned $4-billion in phony equity.

 

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Hate employee wellness? Priority Health suggests two alternatives

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American Journal of Health Promotion advocates statehood for Puerto Rico–and Guam and the Marianas Islands and seven other territories

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Well, maybe not every single eensy-beensy teeny-weeny last one of them

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Superman Meets Wellness:  Health Fitness Corp.’s Program Makes the World Spin Backwards

HFC didn’t start the program until 2006 (“Treatment Year”) but according to their own slide savings started in 2005 (gap between blue and red lines).  Here is the back story.

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Seinfeld Meets Wellness:  US Corporate Wellness Achieves Huge Savings by Doing Nothing…

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...and Wellsteps saves money even if there is no reduction in obesity and smoking…

…or if you hand out cigarettes and Big Macs in the lobby:

You read that right: even if your smoking and obesity rates increase from 0% to 99%, Wellsteps “ROI calculator” (which curiously doesn’t even calculate an ROI) shows that they will save you money.

The top of this slide says: “Email a colleague about this tool.”  We agree.  After you read the full write-up on Wellsteps, definitely email a colleague and tell them what a tool this is.

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Total Wellness is urging that wellness programs be…

Perhaps their reference accounts include the US Marine Corps and…

…Chase & Sanborn

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From July 2008 to June 2009, Avivia conducted the fastest 3-year study in history

 

 

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Cerner’s diagnosis for terminally ill patient:  “Blood pressure higher than what is ideal”

Yeah, I know, I shouldn’t enter phony numbers into HRAs to get a good laugh by showing how vendor models are fabricated.  But I didn’t. This is the screenshot from their brochure.

PS  We don’t know if this employee survived.  A few people with “pulse differentials” of 20 (systolic minus diastolyic) are lucky enough to leave the hospital alive.  Thank goodness Cerner’s HRA caught it.  That borderline hypertension’ll get you every time.

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In addition to the usual 3.27-to-1 ROI, LifeDojo’s wellness programs can increase revenues by 40%…

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…by achieving the following outcome:

Hey, at least no one can accuse them of lying, which makes them unique in this field.  (However, it should be noted that the percent of employees willing to be weighed twice who achieved that endpoint on their own would be close to 1 in 3 anyway.)

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One Two Three Four.  Open Your Email and Sweat Some More.

Over the course of a year-long weight loss “campaign,” Pfizer’s employees who opened their weight-related emails lost 2.4 ounces while those who didn’t open those emails gained 1.6 ounces.  Possibly this entire difference can be attributed to the caloric expenditure needed to click through, read the message and then swear at Pfizer for cluttering their inbox with this tripe.

And let it never be said that Ron Goetzel and his colleagues lack a sense of humor — they gave this program a C. Everett Koop Award.

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Pfizer Should Have Hired HealthyWage

With more than 200,000 HealthyWage.com participants across America collectively losing over 10 million lbs. and gaining over $2.5 million in cash prizes for their pound shedding success…it’s clear this company’s weight wagering methodology is extremely powerful

Powerful Indeed! The average participant, for a modest $12.50 incentive, lost 50 pounds…

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…which isn’t as “powerful” as Total Well-Being, which got “consumers accountable for their health” to lose almost half their weight:

Hopefully at some point the “consumer” will be “empowered” enough to ask for something to eat before they starve to death.

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Provant Forgot to Renew Its Subscription to the New York Times

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By removing those complex consonants?

 

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“Disruptive” indeed!  Bravo is providing wellness services to the detainees at Guantanamo Bay

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Vivify wants to make sure you understand their concepts, and get their ideas 

Their program is “simple and easy.”  They use “weight scales.” And “with appropriate connectivity, patients can engage in real-time interactive videoconferencing.”   And they have an “ROI of $2.44 return for every dollar invested.”
Wanna know a little more about them, as in who they are?

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In addition to Obamacare, we now have another new law to contend with…

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…and still another new law, which has its own accreditation standards

 

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Was Heathiest You absent the day the teacher taught math?

500 insured people times slightly more than 3 visits per insured person (which they call 12.3 visits for a family of four) doesn’t equal 1250.

 

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On the whole it was a very good year for the undertaker

If you have diabetes, the CDC says you have a 150% chance of dying.

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That’s Why I Fell for the Leading Leader of the Pack

 

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Health Fairs Direct channels Yogi Berra

“It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.”

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Vote Early and Often for Viverae’s Screeners

Consider these listed qualifications.  Viverae’s screeners are:

1. Skilled
2. University-trained
3. Supervised by “personnel.”

You can’t get more qualified than that.  Assuming they weren’t born in Canada or Kenya, they could even run for president.

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Well, maybe quality control is not that extremely important…

 

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Come again?  I didn’t quite catch your name.

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To paraphrase the immortal words of Abraham Lincoln, it’s better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool than be a salesperson for Pharmanex and remove all doubt

Our ROI is show / tracked by the insurance companies we have “on board” with our program. Obviously do to the confidential nature of our sales pipeline I can’t provide names but I can state our findings: absenteeism rate saving of $1. invested = $ 5.82 savings. You are so correct in your statement (in summery) about “employee by in” . We contribute our success to the fact that we can prove the antioxidant / oxidation stress (ROS) health (on site) right in the brake rooms with a 30 second scan.

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Total Wellness Will Make You a Job Offer You Can’t Refuse

Total wellness recognizes the importance of a “fostering a positive culture” for recruiting “talented employees.”

And what better way of “fostering a positive culture” for your employees than by screening the stuffing out of them?

Because, after all, nothing says “talented employee” like low body fat.

But wait…there’s more.  Total Wellness offers the total package of totally inappropriate screens.

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You can never be too rich or too thin…especially too thin, if you’re Kurbo Health

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WELCOA was founded by the inventor of the all-you-can-eat self-serve restaurant

 

 

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JD Salinger Meets Trotter Wellness and WELCOA

Remember that scene in Catcher in the Rye when Stradlater gets Holden to write his English composition but tells him not to put all the commas in the right places so the teacher won’t suspect he wrote it?  The good news is, no worries about confusing Holden Caulfield with WELCOA.  In their ad for Trotter Wellness, WELCOA didn’t put any of the commas in the right places.

Frankly, we’re not sure WELCOA has ever put a comma in the right place.

At the risk of ruining a joke by explaining it, it’s not just that all the punctuation is missing from the descriptor.  It’s that according to Trotter’s own web page reproduced below, the particular spot WELCOA’s literary lions decided to place a comma shouldn’t have one.  This gives WELCOA both a false-positive rate and a false-negative rate of 100%.  Even in wellness that’s a bit on the high side.

PS  Seems like we’re always delivering bad news here.  Trotter, we hate to be the ones to have to tell you this, but: there is no such designator as an “Ltd” in US corporate law.

PPS  It’s rare that we recommend navigating away from our own site (briefly) but Trotter’s Glassdoor reviews are even funnier than this site.  If multiple employees telling almost exactly the same story are to be believed, the only thing Trotter is a “recognized leader” in is:  lying.

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WELCOA Actually Causes People to Spell Differently, Study Shows

We look forward to the annual football game between the Fighting Irish and the Fighting Chickens.

 

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Treadwell Offers a Unique Perspective on Anatomy and Physiology…

A patented methodology uses the human body’s 2nd heart, the calf muscles, to increase the velocity of blood in the circulatory system without increasing the vital signs of the user while the user provides all the energy to power the device;  Remarkable and Unique! This supports the body in ways of no other activity or movement because of what it does not do.  It does not increase vital signs and does not cause a redistribution of  blood in the body.   The body receives more oxygen, nutrients, enzymes, hormones and antibodies where it needs them more quickly.  Carbon dioxide and byproducts of cellular activity are removed and transported to the filtering organs more quickly.

 

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Because nothing says risk reduction like a fresh coat of nail polish

 

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 Another such victory and we are ruined

We were delighted to see a program that works!  AHIP reported on that rarity of rarities, a wellness “success.”

So we clicked through on this success to the headline, and discovered the “reduction in obesity burden” that these companies “reaped.”

How much “success” did these companies “reap“?  Well, before we tell you, we should caution that vendors never track non-participants and dropouts.  So the bad news is, these big weight loss “successes” that vendors “reap” are always way overstated.

The good news is, this is not that situation.  The minority that stuck it out and completed the program “reaped” a weight loss of:  1.3 pounds.  (The decimal is in the right place.)  This yielded a BMI reduction of:  0.2. (Ditto.)    This is even a worse performance than Shape-Up “reaped” in their program that we chronicled.

You could reap that much success simply by fasting the day of the weigh-in until you “reap” your incentive check.

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Not only is 144,000 people not “1 out of 19 people in the United States”.  144,000 is barely 1 out of 19 people in greater Cleveland.

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And yet these are the same people who wiped out polio.

The CDC is squeezing 20% of “youths” into the top five percentiles.

This isn’t possible no matter how much they weigh.

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Treating gum disease reduced “annual medical costs” for “patients who are pregnant.” (Those patients must be very busy.)

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Trestletree wins two awards:

1. Most dedicated workforce (the 300% reduction in absenteeism means that not only do employees never miss a day of work but also they work weekends without even punching the clock), and
2. Best recycling of fortune cookies (they “celebrate life as a mosaic, rich with messiness, meaning and texture”).

They also “exist to pursue health transformation in people,” which is a darn shame because my dog could stand to lose a few pounds.

Note: for the record they did ditch this slide after I explained to them that they shouldn’t have played hookey the day their teacher taught math.

That’s the good news.  The bad news is, if you read the whole thing you’ll see they also played hookey the day their teacher taught English.

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Bobby McFerrin meets wellness:  Health Hero appoints a “Chief Happy Officer” 

We are Health Hero and our corporate wellness programs give back a money-back guaranteed ROI of $4 to $16 per $1 spent within 6 months, but more importantly: lives get transformed, habits change, and employee health improves. We also have the best service and we are the lowest price ( If you are the appropriate person to speak with, what does your calendar look like? If not, who do you recommend I talk to?

Yours in Health,
Anthony Diaz
Chief Happy Officer
Health Hero

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Hey, Wellnet, Sesame Street called.  They found your missing “5.0.”  Count Count also offered to teach you how to draw a graph.  

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And their father’s still perfecting ways of making sealing wax.    

Regardless of Cerner’s antediluvian advice offered by their HRA, it is perfectly OK to consume cholesterol in your diet, as has been known for about 30 years.

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The CDC is shocked, shocked, to find that mortality is going on in here! 

Um, what are we supposed to die of instead?  Many countries would brag about that statistic.  It’s called “civilization.”

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Vivify Health’s Principal Investigator Might Be a More Credible Principal Investigator If He Could Spell “Principal Investigator.”  We’re just sayin’…

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Propeller Health’s Principal Investigator Might Be a More Credible Principal Investigator for Propeller Health If He Could Spell “Propeller Health.”   We’re just sayin’…

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Wellness Innovations might be a more credible wellness vendor if they could spell “wellness vendor.”  We’re just sayin’…

Wanna know who does not “bring exceptional value”?  Wellness Innovations’ copy editor…

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…Who is apparently moonlighting for Pyrimed…

 

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…Who is apparently moonlighting for Heath Fairs Direct…

Anyone who can decipher the word “impinge” in any of Health Fairs Direct’s uses of the word wins a free thesaurus.  Decipher it in all three places and you get a free decoder ring.

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...who apparently got lured back to Wellness Innovations to measure outcomes:

Make sure to link through and read the other “key take-away’s”

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Star Wellness’s Sales Pitch:  Our Needles Aren’t As Dirty As Other Vendors’

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Sal, Wyoming’s Not a Country.

Health Fair [sic] Direct, Connecticut’s not a city

And, Vivify, pneumonia’s not a chronic disease…

…which is why you never hear anyone say: “I was diagnosed with pneumonia a few years ago, but I’m staying on top of it.”

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Health Fair [sic] Direct may not know Connecticut is a state, but no one can accuse them of not busting their S

…and they also want to make sure we remember that corporations are people too

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The Definition of a “Healthy Employee” Is One Who Has Not Been Diagnosed

Feeling fine today?  Alas, you better get your affairs in order, bid your loved ones adieu, and watch the shows you’ve DVR-ed.  Why? Because, dodo-brain, feeling fine means you have:

You are “walking around without a clue that [you have] a debilitating or terminal condition.”  According to this company (which at this point, having been “outed” by us, had the good sense to take this off their website…but not until we captured a screen shot), the major symptom of I Feel Fine Syndrome is:  not having symptoms.

We’ll let them take it from here, to display not only their epidemiological prowess but also, this being the wellness industry, their grammar and spelling prowess as well:

We must confess we learned a lot from this.  We had not realized that employers’ concerns about employees feeling fine had their roots in ancient history.  But there it is, right in the opening words:  these concerns date back “millenia” [sic], when employers failed to get their employees tested for “percolating” conditions before throwing them to the lions.

To summarize, the bad news is that feeling fine may be hazardous to your health.  The good news is that your ICU bed may not need a DNR notice anytime soon because elsewhere these folks says it “has programs and solutions to help your employees overcome their I Feel Fine Syndrome.”  And it is “very likely” these programs and solutions can “completely cure the problem…forever in our bodies.”

And not a moment too soon, as far as we’re concerned, because the clock is ticking: we’re never felt better in our lives.  That’s the good news.  The bad news is, it sounds like we need to start contributing more to our 401K’s.

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You may think you’re misreading this due to the small print, but you’re not.  It really does say “all data bench marked by the biophotonic antioxidant health scanner.”

 

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Hate these clippings?  You’ll despise our book, Surviving Workplace Wellness, as it delves into the wacky world of wellness, where vendors push programs designed to make employees happy whether they like it or not.