This is the second part in the series on wellness vendors and the US Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF).

Q: Why do vendors ignore or flout the USPSTF?

There are five reasons, three of which are unfortunate:

1. Many vendors don’t understand the entire concept of screening, neither the science nor the arithmetic described in Part 1.   Healthcare is hard, and the USPSTF can’t be expected to dumb themselves down so that wellness vendors, for whom simple math is a challenge and who don’t have to meet any educational or licensing requirements other than eight days of training, can understand it.
2. Obviously, the more vendors screen, the more money they make. Guidelines propose infrequent screening for fewer blood values than most vendors do. That means vendors who abide by guidelines can collect much less money from employers than those who charge what the market will bear. Examples of companies screening the stuffing out of employees include Total Wellness, Interactive Health, Star Wellness, Healthfair, and Healthfairs USA. Needless to say they make a lot of money. (Quizzify is very jealous! Doing the right thing and guaranteeing savings isn’t remotely as profitable as ripping off employers.)
3. Many wellness vendors are dishonest. We’ve already pointed out that Wellsteps bragged about how they screen every Boise employee every year for everything, with no mention of USPSTF guidelines. But after they got caught, they admitted they knew that the guidelines say the opposite. And Optum’s Seth Serxner insisted — out loud, on tape, that they would be happy to screen according to guidelines, if only employers would let them.  And yet, here is Optum’s ad, saying exactly the opposite: if you want us not to raise your rates as much on insurance, it’s a “requirement” to pay us even more than you would save on insurance, to do annual screens.  (Naturally they are quoting two sources that they know to be false as well.)

Q; Those are three bad reasons. What are the two good reasons?

I would like to credit Pete Arens for bigly influencing my answer on this.  It’s rare that someone does that, and even rarer that I admit it. However, in this case, huge credit where credit is due. Pete’s the man.

USPSTF publishes guidelines, not requirements.  It is perfectly OK not to follow them — as long as you have a good reason. The reasons above — ignorance, dishonesty and greed — would clearly not qualify.  However, here are some excellent examples of reasons that would:

1. You work in a high-stress environment, like a law firm. Making blood pressure screening available easily and much more frequently than once a year, even having some discreetly placed cuffs, might be a good idea. (Some maintain that stress doesn’t cause high blood pressure. Perhaps not, but to them I say, watch Episode 5 of The People vs. OJ Simpson.)
2. Your workforce is largely outdoors. Skin cancer and Lyme Disease screens might be indicated.
3. You have alternatives to screening (like Quizzify) for younger employees, but encourage and educate older employees and other employees at high risk to get screened. The USPSTF doesn’t say, “no screens.” It says screens should be age- and risk-appropriate. You offer both to everyone (that’s the law) but steer some employees one way and some the other.
4. Your company is in the chemical dye or railroad industries. A bladder cancer screen or at least educational session to raise awareness might be advisable. (Bladder cancer can be identified and easily treated very early.)

Mr. Arens raised the question specifically of obesity screens. Are they appropriate at all, especially in a workplace? And that brings us to the other good reason to flout the guidelines: you think they’re wrong.  In that situation, make your case.  But it has to be a real case, and obesity screening could very well be such a case:

• The Employee Health and Wellness Code of Conduct specifically says, don’t embarrass or single out employees. This would be a perfect example doing exactly that;
• You are unable to find any meaningful literature or technique that is even remotely shown to successfully address obesity for more than a short, clinically meaningless period of time, so why screen for something you can’t address?
• To the extent you, in a corporate setting, do want to make your workplace healthier, you don’t need screens to do that. Encouraging exercise and avoidance of sugary foods at work would have the same impact.

Read carefully: we aren’t saying specifically you have to pass on obesity screens for those reasons. We are saying that if you differ with USPSTF on any screen, disclose the reasons and/or cite the literature, so it looks like a thoughtful decision.  This is an example in which we would differ with guidelines.

Q: What would be a funny example of a vendor who tries to attack the USPSTF but falls on its sword?

Glad you asked. That would be Healthmine, whose credibility, um, collapsed as a result.  Rule of thumb: to attack USPSTF credibly, a good start would be spelling their name right.  We’re just sayin’…

Q: What would be a funny example of a vendor who flouts the USPSTF recommendations?

You’re asking all the right questions.  That would be Angioscreen. The only screen they offer, for carotid artery disease, is D-rated by USPSTF.

Q: I don’t see what’s so funny about that. Stupid, yes. Harmful, yes. Expensive, yes. But what makes them so funny?

They admit right on their website that employees shouldn’t get these screens.

Honestly, I’m not sure which of those two things is dumber — offering the screen or admitting working-age people shouldn’t get it. But at least no one can accuse them of lying.

Q: They also can’t spell “New England Journal of Medicine.”

Good point. I didn’t even notice that until you brought it up. Maybe their head of their advisory board can help them with spelling, since “quality control is extremely important” to them.

Q: What does the USPSTF think of the wellness industry?

Their guidelines are intended for use by real doctors and medical practitioners. My guess is that they are horrified by the idea of an entire industry, unsupervised and uneducated, “playing doctor” with employees.  Meanwhile, the National Business Group on Health, a vendor-fest if ever there was one, lobbies against the USPSTF for not understanding the importance of screening the stuffing out of employees.

Q: Why do employers go along with overscreening?

That’s a great question. They need only look at their own hospitalization rates to see that hospitalizations from diseases they are trying to prevent by screening, like diabetes and heart attacks, are already ridiculously low. However, rather than look at their own data, they prefer to spout the “86% of illness is caused by chronic disease”  meme, which was already discredited when it was 75%, before the CDC decided to jump it up to 86%.

Anybody who reads that article can see that either is an impossibly stupid statistic.  Most hospitalizations at most employers have something to do with birth events, and most expense at most employers can be traced to one-time items not addressable through eating more broccoli (neonates, transplants, cancer) or employees who either have a rare disease or more likely have a dependent with a rare disease.

Q: Maybe This isn’t fair, and vendors screen more than guidelines because they don’t think cost should be an issue and that employees should get all the prevention they can possibly use regardless of price

Actually, the USPSTF specifically does not include cost in its analysis.  It balances harms and benefits, not costs and benefits.  Screening according to guidelines will therefore lose money, as Ron Goetzel just admitted, even if over the long run more employees may benefit from screens than are harmed.

Quite the opposite. Tons of vendors obsess with hyperprevention because they are totally ignorant of the science and math involved. Our favorite is one called: “HEALTHIER is WEALTHIER and ASSOCIATES.” Along with the usually assortment of wellness industry THC-infused folderol (“our program, if followed diligently for a year, will decrease your employee health cost by as much as $24 for every pound of weight loss, an amount quoted by Dr Michael Roisen [sic] MD, Chief Wellness Officer and Chairman, Cleveland Clinic Wellness Institute”), they want to screen employees every three months. Don’t believe us?

Stay tuned for Part 3: Vendors who understand the USPSTF