A healthy corporation

John Hancock Financial has reduced its expenses by investing in programs that help employees get fit and eat better

August 28, 2011|By Marion Davis, Globe Correspondent

John Hancock Financial employees took part in a boot camp workout earlier… (Aram Boghosian for the Boston…)

Three years ago, Amanda Spring weighed almost 230 pounds. She had high blood pressure and high cholesterol, and knew she was on track for serious health problems.

Today, she is 80 pounds lighter. She has run a 5K and 10K road race and works out daily. She hasn’t taken a sick day in at least two years. “I changed my whole lifestyle,’’ she said.

Spring, 37, made this transformation with the help of her employer, John Hancock Financial, which sponsors a wide range of fitness, nutrition, and health screening programs aimed not only at making employees healthier, but also controlling health insurance costs. With an investment of less than 1 percent of total health costs in wellness programs, Hancock has reduced medical expenses enough to keep annual premium increases, on average, about 3 percentage points below the national trend.

Next year, the company’s employee health care costs will rise just over 5 percent, compared with a national average of 8.4 percent.

“We believed that the only way to truly work toward health care cost reduction was to control the total spend, and to lower that spend by eliminating the need for care of lifestyle-driven illnesses,’’ said Peter J. Mongeau, vice president of human services at Hancock. “The only way to do that was through employee health education and behavior change.’’

Hancock, with employee health care costs of $55 million per year, is among a growing cadre of US companies making significant investments in preventive care and wellness programs as a strategy to reduce overall medical costs.

The idea is simple: Rather than just treat illness, prevent it by identifying workers with health risks, and provide the support they need to stay healthy. It costs more upfront, but in the long run, companies can avoid huge expenses that come with treating chronic illnesses such as diabetes, heart disease, and emphysema.

The share of employers offering at least one wellness program jumped to 74 percent in 2010, up from 58 percent in 2009 and 54 percent in 2008, according to the Kaiser/HRET Employer Health Benefits Survey. Comparable data are not available for Massachusetts, but JD Chesloff, executive director of the Massachusetts Business Roundtable, which represents some of the state’s biggest companies, said nearly all of his group’s 68 members are investing in wellness programs as a cost-saving strategy.

“There is more of a focus of keeping the employee healthy,’’ Chesloff said. “It is much more ingrained in the approach.’’