How would you save with WellAI’s chronic disease management?

WellAI’s Health Cost Savings Calculator – Health Risk Assessment (HRA), Wellness Program and Chronic Disease Management

This is part 4 of the series on the WellAI’s health cost savings calculator for CEOs, CFOs and heads of HR.  Today we will very briefly explain how cost savings from HRA ((Health Risk Assessment), wellness plans and chronic disease management programs for companies of various sizes are calculated.

To implement an analysis of the effectiveness of a health promotion (wellness) program, employees need to be grouped into a treatment sample (e.g. “at high risk”) and a control sample (e.g. “not at high risk”).  This is usually done via an HRA survey.

Once the HRA survey done, given all assumptions outlined in part 2 of these blog series, we start with the most up-to-date and the most comprehensive mega-analysis study currently available in the literature – namely, a June 2020 study by Goetzel et al in the American Journal of Health Promotion that reached out to 439,689 employees from 11 companies of various sizes.  Supplementary exhibit A1 of the paper provides us with a multivariate regression model of an annual total health care spending.  As the paper suggests, we only use statistically significant independent variables (whose p-value < 0.05) to evaluate the share of health costs.  These most significant variables are availability of high health risk, employee age demographics, gender distribution, percent of salaried employees, and percent of employees using a High Deductible Health Plan (HDHP).  When we apply this model, we find that all these variables contribute roughly 22% to total health costs.  By applying the assumed program participation rate of 30.8%, we find that potential health cost savings associated with a wellness program that is focused on chronic disease management is 6.9% (= 22% x 30.8%).

We can do similar exercise for a large employer (employee size of roughly more than 10,000) and for a small employer (employee size of roughly less than 2,000).

Characteristics of a large employer we obtain from a May 2011 study by Kowlessar et al in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine.  Once we input those characteristics into a multivariate regression model from the June 2020 study described above, we find that potential health cost savings associated with a wellness program with a focus on chronic disease management for a large employer is 9.1%.

Similarly, characteristics of a small employer we obtain from a May 2014 study by Goetzel et al in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine.  Once we input those characteristics into a multivariate regression model from the June 2020 study described above, we find that potential health cost savings associated with a wellness program with a focus on chronic disease management for a small employer is 7.2%.

The WellAI app is now available for free on your smartphone.  Please use the following links to schedule a 1-on-1 demo:

• If you are an employer and would like a cool benefit that makes your employees healthier and happier, and saves 34% to 45% on your healthcare costs, please schedule a virtual meeting here.
• If you are a potential investor who would like to be part of a unique once-in-a-lifetime investment opportunity that will forever revolutionize healthcare, please schedule a virtual meeting here.
• If you are a potential customer, a patient or you are just curious about any of the WellAI high tech products – a voice-guided digital health assistant, data-driven Telehealth 2.0, or the scientific chronic disease management program – please schedule a virtual meeting here.

Please follow WellAI on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Telegram and YouTube for news and updates!