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FON Therapeutics' Glenn Sabin Promotes "Marriage" Between Integrative Medicine and Employers |
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Written by John Weeks
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FON Therapeutics' Glenn Sabin Promotes "Marriage" Between Integrative Medicine and Self-Insured Employers
Summary: On his FON Therapeutics site, integrative center consultant, blogger and Integrator adviser Glenn Sabin recently posted a piece on perhaps the most hopeful yet unrealized partnership that integrative health and wellness interests can forge: with self insured employers. Sabin approaches it as a match-maker, listing the value first to the employer and then to the integrative medicine community with which he consults. I add links to a half dozen articles that further explore the employer/integrative medicine relationship.
The November 2012 Integrator Round-up, soon to be published, captures eight separate developments during the previous month that turn our attention to the rich developments percolating in the employer-integrative health and medicine realm. The headline is the fascinating CFO magazine piece about the Parker-Hannafin's go-for-it alternative medicine benefit. The heart of the series references a blog-post from Integrator adviser Glenn Sabin entitled Self-Insured Employers and Integrative Medicine: The Perfect Marriage.
Sabin, the founder of FON Therapeutics, works as a consultant to assist integrative oncology and integrative medicine centers to grow. The theme of this post is one I have urged since, in 1999, the founding director of the National Business Coalition, Sean Sullivan, JD, taught be how to say "integration from the demand side." Isn't there more alignment of interest between integrative heath's cost-saving promise with employers than with hospitals and pharmaceuticals companies on the "supply side"? I asked Sabin if I could re-post it and he approved. Here it is. Some comments and links to a half-dozen related articles are below.
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 Glenn Sabin
Integrative healthcare providers have been well positioned to provide
quality corporate wellness programs and executive physicals for some
time. Closely connected to this phenomenon, literally, is the largely
overlooked fact that more than 100 million Americans today receive their healthcare benefits through self-insured companies.This
article describes how integrative medicine can help employees stay
healthier and be more productive while reducing their employers'
healthcare costs. Importantly, the increasing uptake of
integrative health approaches by self-insured employers also offers
unprecedented business opportunity for the practitioners and centers
delivering integrative care.
WHY SELF-INSURED CORPORATIONS SHOULD CARE ABOUT INTEGRATIVE MEDICINE
Self-insured
companies of varying sizes enter into agreements with traditional
insurance companies to administer their plans. These corporations take
the risk of covering their employees directly and often save a good deal
of money as a result. Add wellness programs and executive physicals,
and the savings become larger. Clearly, self-insured employers have been
taking the initiative to keep their employees healthy.
Healthy employees save their employers money. A healthy workforce increases productivity, reduces absenteeism, and, critically, decreases "presenteeism"
(a word so new that my word processor is telling me it is a typo. It's
not!). You see, it's not enough in this hyper-competitive, 21st century
global economy to get workers to simply show up - they need to be
healthy, pain-free and happily engaged. Presenteeism is the increasing
phenomena in the US workplace where workers are on the job physically,
but suffering from chronic disease, pain or other physical or
psychological issues. This greatly reduces employees' optimal level of
productivity.
Wellness programs and executive physicals are
keeping more employees healthy. Integrative health services can play a
role in that process, as well as provide additional, substantive savings
when used to improve the quality of life of employees dealing with
chronic illness. Self-insured employers spend 75% of their healthcare dollars on chronic conditions. As recent research and increasing experience demonstrates, this is an area where integrative medicine excels.
MOMENTUM BUILDS FROM INTEGRATIVE EXPERIENCE
Large employers like Parker-Hannifan in Cleveland have been covering integrative medicine services for their employees for a number of years. Other large employers such as Dow and SAS
have implemented and broadened the availability of integrative
therapies such as tai chi, yoga and mindfulness-based stress reduction.
These interventions and programs not only reinforce well-being but also
provide relief in cases of recovery from procedures and coping with
chronic illness.
The economic benefits of these processes have
been slow to appear, but are now finding the light of well-compiled
research. Patricia Herman, MS, ND, PhD, an economist and naturopathic
doctor, recently led a comprehensive systematic review of economic evaluations of complementary and integrative medicine covering a period of nine years. Two dozen quality studies indicated the cost-effectiveness of delivering integrative healthcare. This research was well described in a piece in the Huffington Post by John Weeks, editor-publisher of The Integrator Blog.
Earlier this month, Len Wisneski, MD, FACP, chair of the Integrative Healthcare Policy Consortium (IHPC), presented a webcast for CFO Magazine to more than 250 corporate financial executives. An MD and integrative physician of long experience, he described the capability of integrative medicine as a practical way to rein in spiraling healthcare costs. (CFO webinar slides here; requires free registration: The CFO Playbook on Health Care Cost Management.)
One of the most enduring information and research programs to embody integrative health in corporate work-sites is the Corporate Health Improvement Program (CHIP),
established at the University of Arizona's Center for Integrative
Medicine in 2002. The program is funded by a number of large global
self-insuring corporate members including Ford, IBM,
Nestle, Pepsi, Pfizer and Prudential. Its current focus is on
"integrative medicine's clinical and cost-effectiveness to corporate
America."
These examples demonstrate how the overwhelming rise in
health care costs is being confronted by the entities that pay a huge
portion of the nation's $2.7 trillion annual health bill: business,
which accounts for 37% of that total spend. These cases also demonstrate
that integrative health practices have made and continue to make steady
inroads into their planning and programs.
THE OPPORTUNITY FOR PROVIDERS OF INTEGRATIVE HEALTHCARE
While
growing during this transitional period for all of US healthcare, the
uptake of integrative health and wellness approaches by employers and
healthcare providers has been spotty. Adoption depends largely on senior
leadership's belief that integrative options benefit employees and
patients, respectively. Some large city and county governments such as
the city of Chicago and Maricopa County, Ariz.-each acutely sensitive to
health cost issues-are also starting to put wellness programs in place.
In
the case of some hospital systems that feature integrative services,
their staffs may have easier access to these choices than their
patients. This can be attributed to a number of factors including
continuing exclusion of most integrative therapies from the remuneration
system. But this is all starting to change. For instance, as with the
use of acupuncture for pain management and an integrative regimen for
cardiovascular treatments developed by Dr. Dean Ornish, the Multisite Cardiac Lifestyle Intervention Program now accepted by Medicare.
As
the provisions of the Affordable Care Act go into effect in 2014, it is
likely that structures meant to focus on reducing the cost of care,
such as the Patient Centered Medical Home (PCMH), may embrace many integrative therapies in their clinical programs.
Traditional health management firms are developing and implementing corporate health and wellness programs. But most
do not yet have an informed appreciation of the efficacy, safety and
cost qualities of evidence-based integrative approaches. The
same is still true for most employers. Local integrative practitioners
will find opportunities by proactively seeking opportunities to inform
and educate senior executives in human resources or corporate health
programs in their areas, in particular those with self-insured
companies.
As a practical matter, practitioners who believe their
therapeutic and clinical services belong in wellness programs are now
positioned to take the initiative. Those who can articulate the
health and cost benefits are likely to find a receptive audience among
self-insured businesses who are taking the initiative to control their
health care costs by improving the health and productivity of their
employees. Moreover, as the large self-insured firms start to
include integrative approaches, their experience will ultimately
influence companies of all sizes.
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Comment: If you are interested in additional reading on this topic, plus IHPM into the Integrator search function, The initials stand for Institute for Health and Productivity Management. IHPM is led by Sean Sullivan, who I mentioned in the introduction to this piece, was an Integrator sponsor from 2007-2008. Some of what you will find:
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