By Scott McStravic, World Health Care Blog, Feb. 28, 2008
When proactive health management (PHM) efforts began in the 1970s, primarily with worksite wellness programs for employers, they mainly dealt with the arenas of wellness, health promotion and risk reduction. When insurers joined in the 1990s, they focused mainly on disease management (DM). Currently, employee health management (EHM) increasingly combines all these domains into comprehensive efforts, either operated by the employer, or often with multiple EHM suppliers, for risk assessments, specific screenings, lifestyle interventions, etc.
When EHM began, it focused primarily, often exclusively on reducing healthcare/insurance costs, with disability or workers compensation costs included in many cases. In recent years, a growing number of employers, at least those who evaluate their EHM investments, have included absenteeism, presenteeism, and worker productivity/performance (usually estimated, rather than objectively measured), as well, greatly increasing the economic impact of the challenges they identify and the financial gains they achieve.
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