CFOs know well that a small number of health conditions – such as diabetes and heart disease – make up the lion’s share of most their insurance claims costs.
But a recent study offers more specific information on conditions that are the most costly for employer health plans.
The main culprits The Workplace Wellness Trends: 2017 Survey Results by the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans (IFEBP) asked employers to identify the top conditions impacting their health plan costs.
Here’s what it uncovered:
- Diabetes (cited by 41% of employers)
- Cancer of any kind (33%)
- Arthritis/back/musculoskeletal (32%)
- Obesity (29%)
- Heart disease (27%)
- Hypertension/high blood pressure (26%)
- Depression/mental illness (20%)
- High cholesterol (11%)
- Smoking (9%), and
- High-risk pregnancy (4%).
Disease-management programs
In addition to listing the most costly conditions, the IFEBP study also revealed the best practices your peers are using to combat the effect of chronic conditions in the workplace.
Around half of the companies from the study have implemented disease-management programs to help manage chronic condition costs.
If you’re looking for more information on disease-management program vendors, there are plenty of free resources to help.
This website — bit.ly/manage542 — offers just one such example.
Nearly 60% of employers also use health screenings and health-risk assessments (HRAs) to help workers uncover, monitor and manage their chronic conditions effectively.
