What Is 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).

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

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.

Introduction: The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) contains different policies that are pertinent to expanding health care access when needed, re-shaping insurance and market system, extending the health workforce, reducing the financial burden, and improving quality of care and life. Moreover, the aim of the new law is not only to help people when they get sick, but also to support them to enjoy the diverse initiatives and blessings of public health and preventive medicine and incentives to adopt a better and healthy life.1 Based on this fact, the wellness programs are among many of the policies under the provision of prevention/wellness of the ACA that focus on building a healthier nation by expanding the coverage for preventive services at the workplaces and thus reducing the health care cost.1,2

The Preserving Employee Wellness Programs Act (H.R. 1313) has recently been introduced by Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC), chair of the House Education and the Workforce Committee. If passed, it would exempt various wellness programs at the workplace from:

We hear the two terms together all the time in relation to health topics–“health and wellness.” But what does it mean? According to the National Wellness Institute, “Wellness is an active process through which people become aware of, and make choices toward, a more successful existence.” They expand upon that with the following tenets:

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.

The wellness programs that many companies now seem to be interested in is nothing new, as companies have known for many years that a healthy and fit employee is a more productive employee. This company interest in fit employees can be traced back to the time right after World War II. After WWII a few companies decided to construct gyms and staffed them with instructors to help in the promotion of fitness (Sparling 2010), (Chenoweth 2011), (Miller 2014). These gyms were perks typically for upper management and had little effect on the health behaviors or the health care for the majority of the employees. These types of programs continued to grow throughout the 1970s with limited influence because of their focus on upper management but

Companies can produce substantial savings with a healthier workforce. A company’s productivity is lower due to lost time from unhealthy employees. On an average, company’s loss 23.5 days of productive time each year because of time off for sickness or, underperforming at work because of working while sick (Paton 2016). The loss of 23.5 day per year of productivity due to unhealthy lifestyles and poor health equates to an estimated $71.17 billion a year in lost productivity (Paton 2016). The larger English companies in this study instituted wellness programs that have helped in lowering the lost time due to unhealthy life choices by their employees. These programs have reported an 8% increase in the health of employees and companies have reported a 16% increase in productivity.

Employee wellness program is set up to improve the health of employees’, promote their morals and at the same time improve workers productivity. Examples of employees’ wellness programs includes on site clinics, on site gym or employee discount at a gym, smoking cessation, stress reduction programs, weight control and healthy diet. (Churchill, Gilliespie, Herbold, 2014). ). The Center for Disease Control and Prevention in 2008 estimated that the medical cost of chronic disease was 75% of all the health care cost, the cost for obesity was $147 billion and cigarette smoking another risk factor for chronic disease cost $ 193 billion (Churchill, Gilliespie, Herbold, 2014).Some employees due to long hours at work tend to neglect their health. Most employees’ do not have time to eat healthy food they depend on unhealthy snacks due to time. Also there is lots of stress at work place, these wellness programs are suppose to help staff unwind and relax after a hard day at work. It is equally appropriate for employees who are stressed out at home.