By Dinesh Sheth, CEO and Founder of Green Circle Life
In today's healthcare landscape, employers are realizing that improving health outcomes goes beyond treating illness when it occurs-it's about proactively preventing illness. While many view health as a personal responsibility, many employers are shifting their focus to population health.
What is Population Health?
Population health is an approach to healthcare focusing on health outcomes for a group of people rather than treating individual patients. It aims to enhance the overall wellbeing of everyone in that group by addressing medical, psychological, behavioral, socioeconomic and environmental factors that impact health.
By shifting the focus from treating illness to preventing it, population health helps lower healthcare costs, reduce hospitalizations, and improve overall quality of life-both at an individual and group level.
Creating a Culture of Wellness
We recently spoke with Dr. Ray Fabius, co-founder of HealthNEXT and author of Population Health: Creating a Culture of Wellness, to understand the impact of modern digital wellness tools on population health. He shared that there are business benefits to focusing on physical and mental wellbeing, and that research finds a connection between population health and corporate productivity.
"Population health means keeping the well people well, reducing health risks, and helping people get the care they need when they have an acute illness," Dr. Fabius said. "Population health also helps people manage their chronic conditions, so they don't have further complications. Finally, when people face a catastrophic medical problem, they get maximum support. Green Circle Life's SmartFHR platform effectively addresses many of these different areas to help improve population health and wellness."
Offering nice health benefits isn't just important to improve employee connection to the organization. It also increases employee productivity and organizational profitability.
He explained, "There are studies that even show that for a manufacturer, locations where workers are healthier, they produce fewer defective tires."
"The longer you can keep somebody healthy, the more productive they can be at work, at home and at play. This greater productivity translates into improved corporate performance."
Population Health Initiatives
Employers can make a significant difference in improving population health by offering digital resources to address employee health. Key initiatives include:
- Encouraging preventative screenings, vaccinations, and early intervention to reduce chronic disease;
- Leveraging analytics to identify health trends and prevalent risk factors within a population; and
- Using programs to improve employee health and reduce healthcare costs.
Through SmartFHR, a one-stop-shop for employer-provided benefits and services, employees can establish their individual health plan for the coming year which includes visiting their primary care provider, completing biometric and preventative health screenings, seeing which potential vaccines are needed and more. According to one of our large financial services clients, more than 75% of employees reported improved health and wellbeing after using SmartFHR. Furthermore, another leading retail client experienced improved productivity as evidenced by lower sick leave usage among engaged part-time employees who were using SmartFHR.
SmartFHR helps employers track core activities and engagement with resources, empowering HR leaders to communicate effectively with the workforce no matter where they are located - in the office, at the retail location, on a job site or working from home. This centralized, data-driven platform ensures that all employees have easy access to company provided resources as they engage with holistic wellness programs, proactively improving population health.
By making health and benefits more accessible, SmartFHR empowers organizations to improve health outcomes, lower healthcare costs and create a more productive, healthier workforce.
Dr. Fabius concluded, "The positive outcomes connected to population health include more profitable organizations and more engaged employees and family members. As we prioritize a culture of health and wellness, fewer resources are used to treat illness and instead can be directed to keeping well people well."
For more information, contact to support@greencirclelife.com or book a demo.