Health Care Issue Analysis Paper

As a health care specialist, I was asked to research the recent increase in health care costs and recommend a program that can be implemented to reduce these costs.
The reason for this report is due to the amount of health care costs that have increased in the last three years. ABC Corporation has had an increase of more than 200% within the past three years in insurance premiums being paid. Although ABC Corporation has provided its employees with great healthcare plans, the cost, as you will see, has increased exponentially. My findings will reveal potential trends in and outside of the work environment that have contributed to this increase. There are many factors that contribute to our health status. Just like school is a big part of a child’s day, the work force for adults is the same. In school, teachers offer us the tools we need to be successful and we will see that our work environment can also provide our employees with tools to begin or maintain a healthy lifestyle and prevent many chronic diseases.
The methods I used to uncover these trends and find a solution are as follows:
• Researching the company’s history
• Observe the
working environment at ABC Corporation
• Interview ABC Corporation employees
Findings
In 2010, ABC Corporation underwent a financial crisis and was forced to lay off more than 150 employees. This lay off has impacted not only the company, but the employees that were able to keep their jobs. Cuts were made in high volume departments such as the call center. Due to the decrease in employees, your remaining staff were obligated to gradually work longer hours in order to not impact your customers and productivity. This increase in hours has contributed to the increase in claims filed within the last three years.
According to an article by the Harvard Business Review, “numerous studies by Marianna Virtanen of the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health and her colleagues[…] have found that overwork and the resulting stress can lead to all sorts of health problems, including impaired sleep, depression, heavy drinking, diabetes, impaired memory, and heart disease” (https://hbr.org). While reviewing claim paperwork that have been filed in the last three years, there has been a strong connection between stress and health problems at ABC Corporations. The ones that stood out to me the most was an increase in chronic diseases such as diabetes.
Every year, trillions of dollars are paid towards health care costs and chronic diseases are the most expensive to cure. Chronic diseases are “responsible for 7 out of 10 deaths each year, and treating chronic diseases account for 86% of our nation’s health care costs” (www.cdc.gov). Many people think of chronic diseases as mostly impacting elderly people but in the past decade it has increased by approximately 25% among working-age adults. The cost of chronic diseases far exceeds the money and resources spent on treating them. A study by Tower Watson and National Business Group on Health found that “67% of employers identified employee’s health habits as one of their top three challenges to maintain affordable health coverage” (www.cornellhrreview.org). A person’s health habits have great potential of leading to chronic diseases.
As I visited several of your locations, I seemed to see a trend in the work environment. I saw that most of your positions obligated the employee to sit at a desk for more than 8 hours a day. I also saw that a way of compensation for working longer hours were by purchasing lunch for your employees. These lunches never provided a healthy meal. On the contrary, most of the lunches were fast food restaurants. I observed many pizza days and meals from the Olive Garden restaurant that had over 1500 calories per serving. Furthermore, these lunches were bought an average of three times a week. Although it is a nice gesture of the company to purchases lunch for the employees on a weekly basis, due the type of food being bought for the employees, this has contributed to the detrimental state of your health insurance cost and the health status of your workers.
On average, Americans work approximately 47 hours a week with fifty percent of people working more than 50 hours a week according to a recent Gallup poll (www.gallup.com). ABC Company is part of this trend and tries to compensate the extended hours with poor nutritional decisions. With this statistic, we see why it is important to maintain a healthy work and life balance.
I conducted a survey in which 500 of your employees participated. Attached is the survey that the employees participated in. The results were not very surprising after observing ABC Corporation for three weeks. After analyzing and documenting the employees’ response to the survey, it is clear the amount of hours being worked and the non-nutritional meals being provided have made a significant impact on the employees and your healthcare payouts.
Upon doing this survey, I found that 56% of ABC employees work an average of forty-four hours a week and 38% work more than that.
It also shows that because of the lack in personal time, not only are employees eating unhealthy in the work place but also outside of it. One employee stated that “because of getting out of work late, I either do not have the time or the energy to cook myself a meal at home. It has become more easy and convenient to grab fast food on the way home for dinner.” The most interesting part of this survey, and the one that is undoubtedly one of the causes of poor health, is the amount of work related stress ABC employees currently have. Out of the 500 employees that were surveyed, over 91% stated that their work related stress level is over a seven from a scale of one to ten, with ten meaning “very
stressed.”