Program Evaluation Summary

PBG’s Healthy Living program has delivered significant results with year over year improvements since 2004.  Our evaluation approach involves a heavy discipline of quality review of the data, specific performance targets, benchmarking and monitoring. In addition we are applying a rigorous approach to gauge savings, ROI and program impact.

Program Evaluation Highlights

Healthy Living programs reached 82% of PBG’s medical claim dollars in 2006:

• 72% of employees and covered spouses/domestic partners completed a HRA in 2006.
• 35% of employees identified as high/moderate risk participated in at least one lifestyle management program.
• The global flu shot program achieved 33% participation with over 23,000 shots administered in 2006.
• Preliminary results from PBG’s Healthy Challenge 2007 initiative indicate that local wellness champions and inter-business unit competitions may significantly increase employee participation in health screenings, HRAs, lifestyle management and community volunteering. (please see addendum for video clip of interview of a PBG Wellness Champion by Buffalo, NY’s Morning News show).

32% of employees who completed lifestyle programs reduced their risk level in the targeted behavior/risk factor; significant risk reduction occurred from baseline to one-year follow-up in all six areas targeted by interventions.

PBG’s three year medical cost trend of 5.6% has outperformed the national average

PBG’s care management programs demonstrated an estimated savings of $118.55 per participant per month (PPPM) in healthcare costs across all products during the two-year intervention period.

On-site clinics delivered an ROI of $1.70 to $1.00 and $3-5 million projected annual savings.

Over 96% of participants were satisfied with Healthy Living programs.

PBG received the 2007 Best Employer – Healthy Lifestyle Gold Award from the National Business Group on Health. .  The Healthy Living program was also featured on ABC World News Tonight in April, 2007. (please see addendum for video clip)

Overview of Evaluation Methods

To evaluate impact on health risks, medical costs and savings, ROI, disability and satisfaction variety of methodologies were applied including: pre/post analyses with control groups, longitudinal trend analyses and multi-variate regression analyses to address issues such as selection bias, regression to mean, and double counting of program impact. 

In addition, a wide variety of metrics were analyzed including Healthy Living screening HRA and program participation, engagement and completion rates as well as medical claim utilization and employee satisfaction survey results. The scope of productivity metrics are expanding beyond self-reported measures to include disability claims and absence data will be added to our warehouse by 2008. PBG’s data warehouse currently contains medical/Rx/behavioral, health risk assessment, lifestyle management, STD/LTD, workers’ comp and clinic data.

PBG is currently involved in two health and wellness research initiatives. PBG is one of two employers participating with Mercer and the RAND Corporation in a project entitled Benchmarking Health and Productivity Management Evaluation Methods. The study is designed to compare ROI methodologies that measure the impact of HPM programs and establish an industry-standard approach for measurement that overcomes several of the limitations (Selection Bias and Regression to the Mean) of the current prevailing methods. PBG is also working with Johns Hopkins University on a joint research project to investigate stress and depression in the workplace.

The evaluation efforts require extensive coordination with PBG’s vendor partners including SHPS (clinical management), Staywell (lifestyle management), Medstat (data warehouse) and Mercer HR Consulting. The cross-vendor team includes evaluators with PhDs who have held academic positions in public health and behavior science, are widely published in industry journals and sit on editorial review boards of leading publications including the American Journal of Health Promotion and the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine.