Organizations have been successful at reducing healthcare costs by helping their employees/members become wiser health care consumers and live a healthier lifestyle. One effective way to accomplish this is by providing a self-care and wellness guide. It teaches consumers to make better decisions about what medical symptoms require professional assistance and those that can be treated at home using self-care. This is in light of the fact that approximately 25% of all doctor visits and 55% of all emergency room visits are deemed to be unnecessary.
A number of organizations, particularly those that provide Consumer Driven Health Care (CDH), are putting self-care and wellness information solely online as a way to reduce costs. They rationalize that “everybody” uses the internet and it is a low cost way to reach employees/members. Unfortunately, this view has many flaws. Not only will the organization reach less than a quarter of its people, but it will not save any money.
Organizations should provide a self-care and wellness guide in print to each employee/member and only use online content as an adjunct to it. This is the best way for a company to reach the majority of its employees/members and to reduce healthcare costs.
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The article was informative. I was quite surprised at the mention that approx. 25% of all doctor visits and 55% of all emergency room visits are deemed to be unnecessary – That’s considerably higher than I ever would have thought. You should tweet statistics like this if you come across them.