Definition Of Wellness As A Quality And State Of Being Healthy

The Affordable Care Act was passed in 2010 to make sure that most people had medical insurance. With this new healthcare system came the responsibility that individuals would have to take initiatives to try to stay or get healthy. The preventative care portion included in the Affordable Car Act is a big item and very important in health care reform and very positive for the American people. Wellness in the workplace has become a very important issue to help reduce companies medical cost, and to help employees get on track to know their numbers, get healthy, and have a positive healthy mental attitude. Many employees do not understand or know how to get healthy and live a healthy lifestyle. With the rising cost of healthcare relating to

The Affordable Care Act was passed in 2010, with the intent of ensuring that most people in the United States have medical insurance. With this new healthcare system came the responsibility that individuals would have to take initiatives in an effort to stay healthy or at the least, increase their level of activity and health awareness, making them more responsible for their own wellness. The preventative care portion included in the Affordable Care Act is one of the fundamental items of the law and is a particularly meaningful, very positive attribute in health care reform for the American people. Wellness in the workplace has become an essential issue to help reduce companies’ medical cost, and to help employees get on track to know their numbers, get healthy, and have a positive healthy mental attitude. Many employees do not understand or know how to achieve and maintain a healthy lifestyle. With the rising cost of healthcare, especially relating to people not taking care of their bodies, wellness in the workplace has become even more critical. Author Lori Breiner (2007) “believes wellness in the workplace has economic benefits for organizations, because if workers are healthy, they miss less time from work.” Breiner’s theory would suggest that better health increases productivity and profits in the workplace.

Foremost, the healthier a society is, the more productive employees are, which boosts revenue. When an employee’s health is in question, an employer may actually lose 77 percent of productivity, making the loss greater than that of health care expenses. These numbers go up with the combination of lack of exercise, 96 percent loss, and unhealthy eating habits, 93 percent loss, said a study from Brigham Young University, according to an article in a 2012 Education Letter. The study included “those who did not believe their workplace environment would support them in becoming physically and emotionally healthier were more likely to

Best health practices and worksite wellness program is about engaging with employees to understand what they want, taking a tactical method about looking at health holistically. According to Lacoma, (1999 -2014), these worksite wellness programs are intended to help the workers upgrade their health and maintain healthy lifestyles. This package includes exercises, variety of care and treatment for various illnesses (mental and emotional health), healthy food, on time check up reminders, outlined health checks assessments, consultations and therapy. Moreover, Engelman (2012) determined that many of the conditions impacting workers were preventable and requires increased amounts of education, screening, encouragement and benefits to help understand how these affect the quality of their lives. These shifts gained prominence during the 1990s from increased research, about the importance of prevention and the advantages it can provide employers inside the marketplace.The recent Affordable Care Act workplace wellness provisions on implementation and expansion of employer wellness programs serves a great means to offer great opportunity of improving the citizen 's health and also control health care spending. The effectiveness and benefits of such programs should be evaluated to encourage opportunities to support healthier workplaces (Kisberg, (2014).

Life expectancy in the United States is below most of the developed world and yet Americans pay the most for healthcare (CIA). The reason that Americans are so low on the list is their dependency on conventional medicine. Whereas other countries take a holistic approach to overall health and wellness, preventing diseases before they become a problem, the American system of medicine treats illnesses and the symptoms without preventing further damage. The result is an entire society dependent on drugs and surgery and constantly living in pain.

It has recently come to my attention that there are talks of cutting the wellness program here at Dynamic Wellness Center. Should this program be cut there will be a direct negative impact on the employees within the company. With the shift in the composition of the work force our company will need to stay up to date with competitors in attracting qualified employees. The following summarizes what factors prompt the need for a Workplace Wellness Program, the results are program is obtaining, and ways the program can improve and become more cost effective.

Because we understand the importance of health, we decided to implement a health and wellness program for our employees. However, we didn’t just want to give boring lectures and hand out

Optum. (2013). Optum research study: Reducing health risks with corporate wellness programs. White Paper. Retrieved from http://www.optum.co.uk/content/dam/optum/resources/whitePapers/091913-ORC-health-risk-reduction-study.pdf

This outline is intended to be a starting point to guide state agencies in developing their own agency-specific wellness plan. The provided outline addresses specific points to consider in developing the agency plan, but each agency will need to add additional content to define adequately what and how each activity will be implemented in the agency. While the outline is presented in this format for ease of reading and brevity, a more narrative format is recommended to serve as the actual agency wellness plan.

Health in the United States has become a serious issue. With about six in every 10 people suffering from either being overweight or obese in addition to other unhealthy behaviors such as smoking, heavy drinking or lack of exercise. These lifestyle choices have caused a number of chronic illnesses to skyrocket to high rates. “These chronic conditions have become a major burden, as they lead to decreased quality of life, premature death and disability, and increased health care cost” (pg xiii). What the workplace is trying to do is promote a healthier lifestyle for the employee. Some reasons for doing so is that the employer cares about the well being of their employee so that they can be more productive and to help reduce the risk of getting a chronic disease. Since these chronic diseases are becoming more life threatening and the cost of health care is increasing the employers are implementing health promotion and disease prevention strategies also known as workplace wellness programs. “Workplace wellness takes advantages of employers’ access to employees at an age when interventions can still change their long-term health trajectory. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act supports this trend with several provisions regarding health promotion and also mandated this study” (pg xiii).

Benavides noted that “wellness programs are not a quick fix solution to years of employee disregard for their health condition. In most cases at least a two year window is necessary to begin to see positive results. In any case, it is an option that provides a sustainable way to lower health care costs and improve the physical and mental well being of employees.” Under Obama’s Affordable Care Act, $15 billion over 10 years and another $2 billion each year to follow was allotted for healthcare and evidence-based outcomes (to generate and fund such wellness incentives as this paper proposes). Likewise, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 allotted $160 billion total toward healthcare and wellness with $650 million specifically granted to address chronic disease strategies.

sleep. The factors that I attribute to these current heath behaviors are: a lack of social support and

Wellness in the workplace needs to be taken seriously by all employers, and employees. There has been evidence that making sure employees eat healthier leads to lower call out rates and more savings on health plans. In an article in Employee Benefits magazine it states that “Wellness management does not need to be complicated, or costly. A few simple steps could help to mitigate long-term problems, such as introducing early intervention activities that red flag cases identified via an absence reporting mechanism, the proactive management of musculo-skeletal conditions and stress, introducing a smoking cessation program or running regular health wellbeing days. “Workplace wellness as a concept has been used extensively in recent years by management in business and industry, health professionals, fitness experts, and others. This is a policy that should be implanted in all jobs. Wellness may not

Health and wellness in the workplace is crucial to business success. Increasingly, it is recognized that the workplace itself has a powerful affect on people’s health. When people are satisfied with their job, they are more productive and tend to be healthier. When employees feel that the environment at work is negative, they feel stressed. Stress has a large impact on employee mental and physical health, and in turn, on productivity. Companies that promote healthy lifestyle habits for employees to improve their health, often take the success of the company to heart and are likely to be absent less often for health related reasons.

Health and wellness are increasingly being used. Health actually is more to a medical and describes the mental and physical state of a person. It will reflect a lack of disease of a person. In the contrary, wellness is defined as the overall process of maintaining a state of good health of a person. Wellness involves conscious decisions on the part of the individual, while health simply describes a person's condition of the body. However, the combined phrase health and wellness showed the meaning of the state of complete physical, mental, emotional health and social wellbeing, and it is when a person is absence of disease.