JFK Health Achieves Huge Gains in Employee Health in Partnership with SeeChange Health

SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 15, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- SeeChange Health, a leader in clinically driven health improvement as an enterprise service, and JFK Health, a leading healthcare provider in Central New Jersey, announced today that after five years of partnership on employee wellness JFK Health has measurably improved health and lowered costs for more than 8,000 employees and their families. Some of the success metrics JFK Health reports include:

• 31% decrease in hospital admissions
• 50% decrease in hospital readmissions
• 48% higher cancer screening compliance than the national average
• 35% higher diabetes disease management than the national average
• $2.8 million in benefit savings returned to employees in 2013 alone
• More than $5 million in healthcare cost savings over the past five years

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JFK Health engaged SeeChange Health in 2008 to help unite employee health and wellness into the JFK benefit plan. Healthcare costs were rising with double-digit trends. JFK Health identified disease management and prevention as a strategy to turn that trend upside down.

"We realized that the best way for us to begin disease management was with prevention and early identification of disease or precursors to disease," says Pat Cooke, Corporate Director of Human Resources, JFK Health. "SeeChange Health provided a solution that would engage our employees and enable us to track employee compliance with preventive health actions, including annual screenings, assessments and disease management guidelines."

JFK Health launched their Healthy Plus Plan, which rewards employees for making better lifestyle choices. The plan's enrollment has grown 300% since its inception. The foundation of the plan is SeeChange Health's FlyWheel, which:

• Brings individual health data together, including claims, lab, pharmacy, health and biometric assessments.
• Detects and predicts chronic conditions like diabetes and coronary artery disease using trusted medical guidelines.
• Engages healthy action by recommending preventive care, condition-specific care, and medication adherence actions, and motivates employees to complete them using meaningful, personalized incentives.
• Measures and reports health improvement, so that employers can reward members for healthy behavior together with their benefits plan. By improving their health, employees and organizations lower their healthcare costs.

"My husband never goes to the doctor unless he is sick--and even then it was a struggle. He is a healthy guy who exercises, but had been feeling tired and could become moody, but we did not give it much thought," said Megan C. Garcia, MA, CCC-SLP, Speech Language Pathology Supervisor, JFK Health. "When he joined the Healthy Plus Plan, his blood work revealed he had significant hypothyroidism. He's now healthy and taking medication daily. Without intervention, he may have suffered significant health problems had his thyroid issue continued to go undetected."

If annual health screenings reveal a chronic condition, like diabetes or coronary artery disease, employees are given specific health actions to complete that help them manage their disease. These health actions are based on guidelines and protocols from the largest national organizations devoted to fighting disease, and are updated annually. Other actions may include annual visits to a specialist, eye exams, HGA1C testing, and other screenings.

SeeChange's powerful analytics enable JFK to measure employee health improvement and quantify health savings. "SeeChange cuts the data in a number of ways to help us better understand our employee population," Cooke comments.

By getting healthier, JFK employees are also saving money. Completing their screenings and preventive health actions allows them to save 40% on their benefits premiums each pay period. They also have an opportunity to earn additional rewards if they achieve their incremental health goals. The bottom line: "In 2013 alone, our employee wellness initiative built upon SeeChange's health improvement platform, returned $2.8 million in rewards/cost savings to our employees," says Cooke. Overall, the health system has saved more than $5 million in healthcare costs over the last five years.

About SeeChange Health
SeeChange Health is the leader in clinically driven health improvement as an enterprise service. The company has the most advanced and adaptive clinical-behavioral knowledge base to predict and improve health, increasing healthy behavior with tailored rewards based on behavioral economic algorithms. SeeChange Health provides the most advanced and easiest to implement health improvement platform, and unites all health and wellness programs into a single, powerful, integrated solution. The company measures health improvement and quantifies return on health investment with more than 1.4 million members, early chronic condition diagnosis, and 50% reduction in hospital readmissions. SeeChange Health serves the Fortune 1000 and regional health plan providers. Learn more at seechangehealthsolutions.com.

Media Contact:
Reena Mukamal
Email 
650-218-3139

SOURCE SeeChange Health

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