Aetna Offers New Web-Based Product Designed to Enhance Health and Productivity in the Workplace
Simple Steps To A Healthier Life™ provides employees with customized health information and action plans
HARTFORD, Conn., March 10, 2003 — In an era of steadily rising health care costs, employers are more interested than ever in managing their health care dollars and increasing employee productivity. Aetna (NYSE: ΑET) is helping employers address these challenges by launching Simple Steps To A Healthier Life (Simple Steps), a unique web-based wellness product aimed at enhancing employee health and productivity.
The product incorporates information on disease prevention, condition education, behavior change programs and health promotion services into a streamlined web-based product that employers can purchase as a component of their employee benefits.
"Aetna is responding to employer requests for innovative products that help empower consumers to become more involved in their own health management and health care choices. In light of the emergence of consumer-directed health care products, such as Aetna HealthFund, it is important to provide employees with tools that enable prudent decision-making. Simple Steps To A Healthier Life offers credible, consumer-focused health information and promotes healthy lifestyle changes through action-oriented programs," said Aetna President Ronald A. Williams.
According to a Hewitt Associates study released in 2002, companies increasingly are turning to health promotion programs and are expected to look for ways to enhance and expand existing programs. In fact, 93 percent of U.S. companies currently offer some kind of health promotion program, up from 89 percent in 1996.
Logan Aluminum, a manufacturing company based in Russellville Kentucky, has had a structured employee wellness program in place since 1993.
"In addition to providing incentives for employees to fill out health risk assessments, the company encourages teams of employees to meet regularly during work hours to set personal health goals and provide each other with encouragement and support," explained Howard Leach, human resources manager at Logan Aluminum. "Simple Steps was an important factor in our decision to purchase Aetna HealthFund as our employee health benefits plan in 2003. It was based in large part on our belief that it was time to take the next step and provide individually tailored wellness action plans that employees can access anytime, anywhere, giving them even more control over their health."
Simple Steps combines both online and offline wellness products and services. The product is included as part of Aetna HealthFund and available for purchase to supplement other benefit plans. Employees who are Aetna HealthFund members can access a link to Simple Steps through Aetna Navigator, Aetna’s password-protected self-service benefits management website. Employees enrolled in other plans can enter the site through a secure password-protected website via the Internet at work or from home.
"The cost of investing in employee’s health through products like Simple Steps To A Healthier Life is recovered many times over through reduced medical costs and enhanced productivity," said Sean Sullivan, president and chief executive officer of the Institute for Health and Productivity Management (IHPM). The IHPM was created in 1997 to make employee health an investment in corporate success through enhanced workplace performance.
Simple Steps invites users to complete an online health risk assessment, which enables the tool to identify certain risk factors and generate a personalized health action plan with wellness and disease prevention programs. Employees are encouraged to make health changes that fit their lifestyles and track progress toward improvement. Based on self-reported information, participants may receive feedback and recommendations for additional programs and resources.
An employee who completes the health risk assessment and indicates risk factors for heart disease, for example, may receive dietary and exercise suggestions in addition to a link to a website with cardiac-related health information and decision-support tools.
Simple Steps is structured to work with any health benefits plan so that employers can make available to all their employees, regardless of the health plan selected, the same health information and programs. Employers can customize the site with their company name and integrate their own links and wellness programs. In addition, an integrated assessment tool can help employers track health trends within their employee population based on aggregate data that supports strategic decisions for wellness and intervention programs.
Other resources available through Simple Steps include Aetna InteliHealth, Aetna’s award-winning consumer health information website. Aetna InteliHealth
(www.intelihealth.com) delivers online consumer health information through an in-house editorial staff and relationships with Harvard Medical School and the University of Pennsylvania School of Dental Medicine.
Simple Steps features a health risk assessment developed by WellMed, Inc. in combination with a health productivity measurement tool developed by a faculty member at Harvard Medical School. Interactive wellness programs are offered through a relationship with Miavita Inc.
Aetna is one of the nation’s leading providers of health care, dental, pharmacy, group life, disability and long-term care products, serving approximately 13.7 million medical members, 11.8 million dental members and 11.7 million group insurance customers, as of December 31, 2002. The company has expansive nationwide networks of more than 552,000 health care services providers, including over 332,000 primary care and specialist physicians and 3,373 hospitals. For more information about Aetna, please visit the company’s website
at www.aetna.com.
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