Silicon Valley has been a hub of innovation for the past few decades, and Palo Alto-based Theranos is no exception. Founded in 2004 by Elizabeth Holmes, then a 19 year old Stanford dropout, Theranos is poised to disrupt the 75 billion dollar laboratory testing industry.
Their business model is simple; they developed technology which allows them to be quicker, more convenient and far cheaper than their competition.
Can your eye doctor or dentist save your life? It turns out the answer is yes. Taking advantage of employer-offered vision and dental benefits may have unexpected advantages. While the more obvious benefits of eye and dental exams are better vision and good oral health, routine vision and dental exams can also spotlight early warning signs of other health problems. What are some of these health issues, and how are they discovered by your ophthalmologist or dentist?
As we discussed in our last post, those tasked with the job of overseeing company wellness programs often find it difficult to quantify the success of those programs in a definable way. The problems facing HR departments when tasked with establishing the ROI on wellness are many, from program structures that don’t provide enough trackable data, to the difficulties of measuring intangible successes in terms of money, to the simple fact of limited time, resources, and manpower. These issues are often compounded by unrealistic expectations and a desire for quick results.
When making policy decisions around wellness initiatives, companies often find it difficult to quantify the success of these programs in a definable way. There are many reasons wellness ROI is difficult to measure. Because of the sheer number of variables to be considered, there is no simple, standard formula into which HR departments can plug a set of numbers to get an answer to the ROI question. Any calculations in this area require considerable critical thought.
Pitfalls of Program Design and Company Culture
One of the problems facing HR departments is the inaccessibility of several baseline elements that must be tracked accurately in order to calculate their programs' ROI. Poor original structuring of wellness initiatives compounds the problem. If the wellness program is not structured in such a way that there is accountability for employees involving concrete, measurable tracking of progress, it will be virtually impossible to calculate ROI with any degree of success.
Many workplace wellness programs focus, rather unwisely, on altering unhealthy employee lifestyles. Examples of such programs include weight-loss contests and smoking cessation campaigns, just to name a few.
While these efforts are certainly admirable, anyone who has tried to lose weight or quit smoking will tell you that changing ingrained behaviors and habits is extremely difficult – even when there are significant incentives involved. To us, it seems that the focus on lifestyle and behavioral changes as a starting point misses the mark.
Rather, we recommend that employers almost always start with age appropriate screenings and immunizations. This approach is a simple and effective way to care for employees and prevent and/or treat developing conditions. And because most of the recommended screenings and immunizations are covered at 100% by most health plans, there’s less pushback from a participation standpoint.
How will the recent Supreme Court ruling legalizing same-sex marriage affect employee benefits? The short answer is that it will streamline the administration of benefits packages, but may complicate things in the near term as employers adapt to the new rules.
The Supreme Court, in a 5-4 ruling, has effectively made same-sex marriage the law of the land in all 50 states. While political and legal wrangling remains where this new right may conflict with religious belief, same-sex marrige have effectively become, in the eyes of the law, the same as what may consider "traditional marriage". Marriage Equality Now the Law of the Land
The decision is the culmination of a long struggle by gays and lesbians to gain the same marriage rights that heterosexual couples already enjoy. The legal battles that have consumed the courts and the political fights that have roiled state legislatures have effectively come to an end: marriage equality is the law of the land.
Well that was a close one! If anyone missed it, the Supreme Court of the United States last Friday held in favor of the defendants and found subsidies included in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) applied to all states and not just the ones that set-up state-run Exchanges.Did anyone really expect this 30,000+/- page body of work to fall, based upon the interpretation of just a few words?
Regardless of your feelings about this latest ruling, or the law in general, most folks agree that it is time to move on. The last four years have been action packed and filled with non-stop controversy regarding this law. In the end, another four years of confusion and uncertainty won't help the citizens of this country.
While there are many aspects of the law that make absolutely no sense and are terribly problematic, there are also many aspects that are great: guaranteed issue, no medical questions for enrollees, 100% coverage for preventative services and streamlined enrollment are all good things that have come from the law. Mandates, reporting and penalties are areas that will require years for individuals and employers to fully understand and fully comply at it is time to move on. The last four years have been action-packed and filled with non-stop controversy regarding this law. In the end, another four years of confusion and uncertainty won't help the citizens of this country.
The recently published MetLife Benefit Trends Study contains some very interesting and perhaps surprising statistics regarding the annual benefits enrollment process.
We encourage you to check it out for yourself (it’s a very quick read). Here are a few of our key take-aways:
Despite a strong economic recovery, the Affordable Care Act is pressuring employers to find an optimal balance between total employee compensation and annual company profits.
One of the best ways for companies to manage staffing costs is by improving employee retention, reducing turn-over and focusing on strategies to retain existing, skilled employees. Here’s why this is so important and what companies can do about it.
It’s easy to forget than the true cost of hiring a new employee is far more than just salary and employee benefits, which usually total in the 1.25 to 1.4 times base salary range (meaning that a salary plus benefits package for a $50,000/year employee could equal $62,500 to $70,000).
