Safeway's health care program gets attention

by Roy C | June 17, 2009 at 11:56 am

1544 views | 38 Recommendations | 7 comments

One of the best approaches to date for dealing with medical care has been the development of the wellness program.

The estimates are that about 70% of all medical problems are directly related to behavior. Even Obama, during the campaign, cited the hundreds of billions of dollars of savings possible if the US returned to the obesity levels of the 1980s.

Recently, with all the discussion about our health plans in the US, attention has finally been put on one of the most successful programs around, a wellness-based program of the Safeway Corp., the supermarket giant.

According to its president, the program has successfully contained costs since 2005, and would have saved the nation about 550 billion dollars in health costs, had we been using it nation-wide.

Basically, what you get is a discount for changing your health-related behaviors such as smoking, exercise, diet and alcohol use to change the parameters of your health, such as weight, cholesterol and triglyceride levels, blood sugar levels and blood pressure. That in turn lowers the need for medical care, pharmaceuticals, and drastic interventions for coronaries, strokes, and even cancer.

There are very effective programs to help you with this and discounts that Safeway backdates when you accomplish your goal, for even more money.

Apparently, Senator Barbara Boxer of California and Rush Limbaugh have found something that they can agree on. I will try to document that.

Safeway's health care program gets attention

Andrew S. Ross

Sunday, June 14, 2009

My "Citizens, heal Thyselves" item Wednesday on the responsibility of individuals to reform their own health care prompted inquiries from readers wanting to know more about what I referred to as Safeway Inc.'s stick-and-carrot approach.

Based on the belief that rising health care costs are mostly driven by behavior (smoking, eating poorly, not checking your cholesterol, etc.), the Pleasanton company's Healthy Measures program uses screenings and questionnaires and offers access to prevention-related facilities like fitness clubs, along with advice and referrals to help improve behavior.

The carrot: discounted premiums or refunds for passing the screenings or showing improvement. The stick: higher premiums for failing tests and no measurable improvement in behavior. "Holding people accountable gives them incentives," said Ken Shachmut, the Safeway senior vice president who oversees the health program.

It has also kept Safeway's health care costs, amounting to $1 billion or so a year, mostly flat over the past five years, an achievement few other companies can claim, said Shachmut, who admits battling his own weight problems.

The voluntary program now covers 25,000 employees, or about three-quarters of Safeway's nonunion workforce. Elements of the program are included in contracts covering Safeway's union workers, who fall outside the company's self-insurance plan. Shachmut said most of its 200,000 union workers should be participating in the program within the next six years. The main thing that employees covered by the program seem to want, said Shachmut, is "more discounts."

In the meantime, Safeway is spreading its consumer-driven approach via the recently formed Coalition to Advance Healthcare Reform (coalition4healthcare.org), founded by company CEO Steve Burd. The 63 corporate members include Bay Area companies McKesson Corp., PG&E, Clorox Co., and Kaiser Permanente.

"This is the silver lining in the cloud of rising health costs. If we can design incentives in these core areas, we have a fighting chance of getting our arms around it," Shachmut said.

More details: You can find more on Safeway's program at links.sfgate.com/ZHIV. A Chronicle feature that ran earlier this year, is online at sfgate.com/ZHJB. Safeway CEO Burd penned on op-ed on the subject in Friday's Wall Street Journal, available at links.sfgate.com/ZHIX.

The Journal also has a news story in Friday's edition questioning the efficacy of prevention programs (links.sfgate.com/ZHIY). On the other hand, a 2007 nationwide survey of 355 human resources and health benefits managers suggested a strong correlation between wellness programs and increased productivity and market and shareholder value.

3 See all footage | View Slideshow

Share: email story | add to any | | facebook | stumbleupon

recommend This comment thread is now closed

Spydermonkey

at 14:30 on June 17th, 2009

makes since to me.

Do I get a discount for regular exercise & growing my own food?

Roy C

at 16:48 on June 17th, 2009

For regular exercise, yes, but I would suppose that the kind of food determined the discount.

What kind of food do you grow and how do you grow it? Really curious.

Spydermonkey

at 12:03 on June 19th, 2009

WELL, This year we have tomatoes, lettuces, spinach, beans, some volunteer squash, raspberries, blackberries, that covers most of it.

We grow in small, heavilly mulched beds around the back yard. This winter we hope to put a small green house up around the hot tub so we can have tomatoes sooner :)

We use almost no pesticides (only to stop an infestation for exaple) and minimal ferdilizer (besides mulch).

Roy C

at 12:07 on June 19th, 2009

An exercise in self-sufficiency and good health- to be recommended.

You do yourselves a favor in terms of health and you help the environment by lowering your energy requirements because you don't need the food shipped to your house.

How are your blood pressure, triglycerides, cholesterol, body weight doing? Do you take any supplements?