New Perspectives in Wellness & Benefit Communications - Shawn M. Connors (book series for 12 year olds .TXT) 📗

comfortable making its own health decisions, and more empowered to access information and opinions in new ways?

Hold on tight. We’re about to find out.

“For the past century, a premise of health policy has been that patients are ill-equipped to judge the merits of tests, treatments, and providers,” says M. Gregg Bloche, M.D., J.D., an adjunct professor at Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. “Conventional wisdom says that physicians should fill this gap by acting as patients’ agents.”

But today, more people are motivated to take charge of their own care. To enable this trend, businesses and public officials are developing new ways to spread information about treatment efficacy, provider quality, and price .

That means Baby Boomers, many of whom are beginning to think about their mortality, have more power literally at their fingertips — social media platforms, Internet chat rooms, text messages, and other tools to help them inform, question, comment, and challenge.

People are already using advanced medical technology in new, personal ways. Let’s consider a diabetic man in his late 50s. We’ll call him Joe. A few years ago, there was no practical way for Joe to take his own blood-sugar level. Today, he can use his own equipment to track that level. Then he can go to his computer and track the balance of his Health Savings Account (HSA).

While Joe is online, he can explore online health tools that direct him toward a healthier lifestyle. For instance, Google Health’s personalized tools menu includes a diabetes health assessment, a heart attack risk calculator, and a “Health Butler” that emails reminders based on a person’s health profile.

Joe can also manage and update his Web-based individualized personal health record (PHR), which includes his medications, family history, appointment calendar, and much more. Health organizations have worked over the past two decades to integrate medical records, laboratory and pharmacy claims, and insurance claims into one system. PHRs build upon that system in a personalized way to include information that engages people like Joe about their health management.

“Electronic medical records empower people to take responsibility for their healthcare and to ask the right questions of their physicians so they can make the most of appointments,” says Dr. David Gugliotti, a hospital physician at Cleveland Clinic, one of many hospital systems embracing such systems. At the Cleveland Clinic, multifaceted software stores records, prompts preventive care, gives patients access to certain record information, and will ultimately replace the pad-and-pen format of record keeping.

Quick Stat: A recent American Hospital Association survey found that 68% of hospitals are on the road to full electronic medical record adoption.

Jeanette Thornton, director of health informatics at the America’s Health Insurance Plans trade group, says more consumers like Joe will also be able to access the financial aspects of their medical care soon, thanks to tools such as Intuit Inc.‘s Quicken® Health, which enables consumers to organize and view medical expenses, insurance payments, and service history from providers.

Power now lies in patients’ hands. That’s the heart of the matter. And it’s rocket fuel for the future of health and benefits communications.

7. New Wellness Topic: Reduce Debt and Save Money

People must be both health literate and financially literate if they’re to be informed health care consumers. Both types of literacy require an understanding of numbers (e.g., monitoring blood sugar and preparing a budget).

Look for much more integration of these two topics under the banner of wellness programs. Poor health negatively affects employees’ personal finances (e.g., low credit scores resulting from unpaid medical bills). Health is also negatively impacted by personal finances (e.g., overdue bills causing physical stress symptoms, high co-payments decreasing access and adherence to treatments).

When people live longer due to improved health, will they risk outliving their assets, or will they enjoy more time to compound their wealth?

Is it possible that there is a moral argument for making sure we empower people to build a financial nest egg as we work to improve the quality and length of their lives? Most of our clients say health and financial literacy need to be integrated much more.

Employer Behavior Change Initiatives

Money seems to have stuck its toe into the wellness world via incentives. So far, we see evidence of incentives being effective in boosting enrollment and early participation in wellness programs — for example, paying someone to complete a Health Risk Appraisal, or participate in some component of a program. Cash incentives and reductions in premium contributions to health plans seem to be popular.

In the next few years we’ll see financial incentives used to reward people who achieve positive, long-term health outcomes. It’s likely those incentives will be more of the stick variety than the carrot. Why? Behavioral financial research finds people experience more pain from investment losses than happiness from equivalent-sized gains. And employees seem to be more motivated to improve their health by the risk of losing their own money than by earning rewards.

Thus we think incentives will tend to utilize “refundable deposit” accounts and forfeit money if personal wellness targets are missed. Look for employers and health plans to devise programs that make everyone have a little “skin in the game.”

Out-of-Pocket Cash Expenses

A communication tactic that seems to be catching on is to make people aware of the cost of certain lifestyle habits — for example, the cost of a pack of cigarettes multiplied by a year, and then compounded to future value. Or cutting a small expense each day related to snacking. Or getting people to grow their own vegetable garden thus improving their health and consuming the fruits of their labor.

Wellness programs will increasingly include information on how to reduce debt, save money for retirement, follow basic investment concepts, save for college educations, and teach their kids about money. The wellness programs themselves will include financial incentives and may soon become the place employees expect to learn more about money.

For a chart outlining the striking similarities between health and personal finances, see Resource Section Item #1 .

For an example of how employers inform employees about HSAs using a brochure that is listed with other wellness topics, see Resource Section Item #2.

The 8 timeless truths of communication

The previous section featured new thinking — fresh trends to know and follow. This section takes a different spin. It features ageless points — timeless truths about communication that are equally important to abide by.

Our experience has taught us a valuable lesson about communication in general: It’s wildly under-emphasized. Rather than receive spotlight treatment, communication is an afterthought, existing in the shadows. When it’s time to send an email or produce newsletter copy, it gets to come into the light. Then it goes back into hiding.

Any wellness or benefit program concept should start with two questions:

How shall this be communicated?

How shall that communication be received?

Sometimes the most basic things are the most valuable: No information can be absorbed, learned, used, or shared without the effort of two sides — a sender and a receiver. Companies spend time thinking about the former (their own wellness or benefits strategies, what kinds of messages to send), and also some time thinking about the latter (what employees want and need to hear).

But they spend precious little time considering how to maximize the connection between the company and its audience. People talk, email, chat, post, and text all the time, so we assume health and benefits communication should come naturally. It doesn’t.

So before you tackle the practical steps beginning on page 27, know these 8 timeless truths of communication:

1. A flawed plan well communicated is better than a perfect plan poorly communicated.

Over the past 20 years, how many hours have companies spent devising and revising their health, wellness and benefits plans? It’s a huge number.

A result of that time and money is many organizations now build programs that include well-crafted options and best-practice strategies. The plans look excellent on paper.

So why are engagement and enrollment top concerns of wellness program directors?

Why are so many people sedentary? Why don’t we walk a little more? Why don’t we do the simple things — like eat smaller portions?

Why did Dr. Dana E. King, a professor in the department of family medicine at the Medical University of South Carolina, recently analyze Americans’ overall health in the past two decades and issue a C-minus grade?

That’s an expensive C-minus.

We won’t begin to improve until we start thinking about communication at thesame time we devise program details and options.

Having a mighty, feature-rich, seemingly amazing wellness plan or benefits package is useless if employees aren’t aware of the value. A great plan poorly communicated is like a fantastic sound system that lacks an “on” button.

Devising progressive, creative ways to deliver health-related programs and services is admirable, but those methods are the icing. The cake — the foundation for behavior change and real progress — is creative, persuasive communication. It’s actually more effective for a company to build a flawed plan and then communicate it really well. At least employees will tune in.

“Strong communication may be the single most important investment an employer can make in a benefits program,” says Tom Gilligan, Colonial Life’s senior vice president of marketing and branding. “Communication outweighs even the richness of the benefits package when it comes to how much employees value their benefits program.”

Don’t let workplace messages about healthcare, wellness, and benefits fall on deaf ears.

Communication shouldn’t be an afterthought. It should be a first thought.

2. If you think “plain language” is “dumbing down,” you flatter yourself.

There’s a Grand Canyon-sized gap between what organizations want to say and how they choose to say it. It’s common to neglect the importance of “voice” — the tone of your communication, as determined by your audience.

Businesses that want to sound “official” usually end up sounding egotistical or confusing. Their messages are filled with corporate-speak, jargon, and gobbledygook. The intent of their messages is lost in the delivery.

Clarity is the main ingredient of effective communication. If your messages aren’t obvious, they can’t be understood.

In fact, they might not even be read or heard. This is especially true when a topic is viewed by employees as important but intricate (choosing a healthcare plan, understanding a health savings account, improving overall wellness, etc.).

As a workplace communicator, you have the task of reaching a large variety of workers, including people who struggle to read, and those who can read but either don’t take the time or simply tune out health information.

It’s an important challenge. In fact, the National Patient Safety Foundation says the biggest barriers to being healthy are not age, income, education level, race, or ethnicity: Studies indicate that the strongest predictor of a person’s health status is his or her ability to understand and use health information. That’s why Hope Health writes and designs many of it’s client’s communications in “Quick-Read” format.

“We can’t keep focusing on our information instead of our readers,” says Audrey Riffenburgh, founder and president of consultancy Plain Language Works, LLC.

Clear communication is about focusing on what your readers need to know and then delivering that by making sure messages are relevant and understandable.

Putting that communication in “plain language” doesn’t mean you’re “dumbing down” messages. It simply means you understand the importance of having employees receive them.

For a sample of a Plain Language document, see Resource Section Item #3.

3. Creativity is a precursor to engagement.

People are motivated in different ways — some are won over with logic and reason, some are influenced by forces of emotion, and some need a healthy mix of both.

One problem with conventional health communication is that it appeals to the head but not the heart. It targets the cranium when employees crave something else. It embodies science — statistics, studies, etc. — but