In 2013, nearly 60% of chief financial officers cited health care costs as a key financial concern for their company. Currently, around 75% of employers with 50 or more employees offer some form of health and well-being program to address this concern. But as long as our health system continues to pay for quantity, not quality, and fails to incentivize prevention, business leaders attempts to promote health in the workplace can only go so far.
General Electric (GE) is one of the nations largest employers, and provides insurance coverage to over 500,000 workers, their spouses and children, and retirees in the US. The company recognizes that it has to go beyond the four walls of the workplace and into the communities where its employees live and work to promote large-scale change for better health.
Beginning in 2009, GE teamed up with community stakeholders including local employers like Macys and Procter & Gamble, organizations including the United Way of Greater Cincinnati, and the City of Cincinnati, where it has its largest employee base. These groups came together to comprehensively improve healthcare delivery by investing in care coordination models and information technology. The company further partnered with the RAND Corporation, a non-profit research institution, to evaluate the impact of this initiative on their workforce.
Read the case study on GEs Cincinnati Healthy Communities Initiative featured in our recently released report “Beyond the Four Walls: Why Community is Critical to Workforce Health,” to learn more about how the company has extended their corporate health strategy to the community.
Are you part of a cross-sector partnership to improve workforce and/or community health? Share how youve worked together below or on Twitter, by using #beyond4walls or tagging @Vitalityinst
Photo credit: Venture Beat
