Why Total Health Management Solutions Should Be Part of Your Benefits Strategy

It’s just a fact: if your employees are thriving, chances are that your business will, too. You simply must invest in the wellbeing of your people – physical, mental, spiritual, and otherwise – today, to ensure a better future for them as well you. That calls for total health management (THM), a solution that emphasizes all aspects of employees’ wellbeing. If you need a primer, here’s why total health management solutions should be part of your benefits strategy – and more.

What is Total Health Management?

Going beyond traditional medical management programs, total health management is basically a collaborative risk management solution that helps organizations as well as healthcare providers by tailoring programs and services to improve member health and maximize plan savings.

As an approach, total health management focuses on making improved health decisions on every level, including body, mind, and spirit. To promote better future health, total health homes in on the fundamental causes of poor health.

What Are the Benefits of Total Health Management?

Overall, the main benefit is that THM heightens employee performance while reducing healthcare costs. That’s a powerful one-two punch.

If you’re data-oriented, here’s a pertinent breakdown, numbers-wise, as presented by Mercer. The bottom line is that organizations that employ effective total health management solutions and strategies experience:

• A 1 percent to 2 percent reduction in medical costs for organizations that engage in best practices.
• A 41 percent reduction in healthcare costs for thriving employees
• A 35 percent reduction in turnover costs for organizations that have thriving employees
• A 31 percent increase in productivity among thriving employees
• A 48 percent improved stock value appreciation over five years for organizations that engage in best practices

What’s the Overarching Total Health Management Approach?

Approaches do vary, but Mercer knits together the clinical aspect with health behavior and consumerism strategies to offer bespoke ways to improve employees’ wellbeing. Specifically, Mercer’s total health solutions provide:

• Know-how. Mercer has more than 60 clinical, medical, and behavioral health pros that bring their expertise and experience to bear to develop workable strategies and interventions that are aimed at helping organizations develop a good-health culture.
• Incorporation. Organizations can lower the amount they spend on healthcare if they integrate health, wealth, workforce, and absence strategies.
• Innovation. Mercer has a Center of Health Innovation that it leverages in crafting strategies. After all, the center is always on top of up-and-coming disruptive technology vendors, which are pushed to continually craft novel solutions to lower costs while improving the quality and delivery of personalized care.
• Guidance. Mercer partners with industry think tanks such as HERO to help organizations stay apprised of total health management trends and solutions that deliver favorable and meaningful results for organizations as well as employees.

What Are Solution Aspects?

Mercer focuses on helping organizations wring more from their behavioral health benefits and uses data analytics to uncover data-based ways to improve health. What’s more, Mercer improves how employees manage their chronic health conditions, which results in significant reductions in organizational healthcare costs.

You now have a good idea why total health management solutions should be a part of your benefits strategy. The bottom line is that when employees are duly equipped to surmount their challenges, they’re more fully engaged at work and in their personal lives. Your organization would certainly benefit from a healthy and happy workforce. In that vein, we’ve found that Mercer has a total health solution that can produce wins all around.