New Employee Wellness Program

Medisys Health Group, a Canadian provider of health-care and medical imaging services to corporations and individuals, has launched a comprehensive employee wellness program “FreshStart” as a compliment and natural extension to their existing corporate health services.

FreshStart aims to help corporations decrease health-care-related costs, increase employee productivity and job satisfaction. The wellness program is also intended to enhance a corporation’s image by providing customized employee health guidance and ongoing support based on tangible evidence.

The FreshStart program includes:

• A health-risk assessment questionnaire to determine personal risk, willingness to change, and main drivers for the individual
• Complete blood draws to obtain baseline employee health data (not finger-prick testing) (blood sugar, total cholesterol, LDL & HDL and triglycerides)
• Metabolic syndrome calculation
• Blood pressure reading
• Waist measurement
• Body Mass Index (BMI)
• Individual, face-to-face health status reporting to employees by a registered health-care professional to explain results, answer questions and provide guidance
• Email access to a health-care professional for follow-up questions
• Comprehensive aggregate reporting to management for goal-setting

“We are finding that employees highly value the one-on-one time spent with the health-care professional to explain their results and aid in their goal-setting process. The information received is highly targeted information that they don’t usually get to cover in a regular check-up with their family physician,” states Randy McCaig, Director of Employee Wellness Programs at Medisys.

Following the on-site health assessment, Medisys provides the company with a depersonalized corporate health overview, which enables employers to better allocate their wellness dollars to address the root causes of their problems.

“Our program is different from the ‘blanket’ strategies that many other companies offer,” states McCaig. “If a company has 50 smokers, some wellness providers would propose a smoking cessation program. Our program goes further to show the employees’ willingness to change. If only five of those 50 smokers are willing to quit smoking, a smoking cessation program will not result in the expected return on investment (ROI). A smoking education program would be better suited for this situation.”

The FreshStart program is available to companies across Canada and is supported by an extensive range of on-site services that are customized to the needs and wants of employees.

“It is important to remember that an employee wellness program is not a ‘nice-to-have’ service or a ‘one-off chair massage’,” states McCaig. “Employee wellness is a long-term business initiative with a tangible return on investment.”

SOURCE: MEDISYS

Article published in Your Workplace magazine in issue 11-5