Program Evaluation Summary

2007 Koop Award Winner

Lifestyle Rewards -- We Energies Health Enhancement Initiative

Narrative Description of Evaluation Results

Lifestyle Rewards (LSR) health incentive program is voluntary and available to all employees annually. Participants’ participation and health experience are tracked by the University of Michigan’s Health Management Research Center. Areas of evaluation focus are health status, medical and productivity impact and cost implications.

Health Risk Status
HRAs evaluate 15 behaviors, measuring the health risk associated with each behavior. Participants receive a personalized health-status report. HEI receives an aggregate report on employee health.

HRA analysis indicates that our population’s greatest risk factors include BMI, safety belt use, physical activity, blood pressure and stress management. Over time, these risks have improved, although BMI has shown the least amount of change. Though BMI scores fluctuate slightly over the years, when compared to other utilities, our BMI is 4% less than average.

Overall, the average number of risks per person has steadily decreased (from 2.5% to 1.9%). The number employees categorized as low risk continually increases, while the number of high-risk employees has decreased by 30%. In a matched comparison over three-years, the number of low-risk employees increased by 8.7%.

Excess Costs
To link health management with company costs, we measure expenses associated with medical care, pharmaceutical demand, absenteeism and worker’s compensation and compare them to health-risk groups. Costs for employees that don’t participate in LSR are also compared to the various risk groups. The base cost includes both medical-related expenses and productivity measures. As risks increase, so does the excess cost. Employees classified as moderate risk exceed the base cost by 50% while high-risk employees double it. Over the last three years, the portion of total cost attributable to excess health risks has sharply decreased (25% to 19.6 %). To manage excess costs, we strive to maintain low risk individuals, while reaching out to the high risk to improve their risk status.

Cost Trends
In 2000, the baseline cost across participant and non-participant groups was very similar. Over the years, a divergence has been seen. The linear pattern in the chart below shows that LSR participants have had the least percent of growth (8.9%) over the 6-year period. While the people that do not participate in LSR have a slightly greater slope than those that do, it is the non-participants’ whose growth rate is the greatest (13.3%).

For all company-insured employees from 1999-2005, our participant vs. non-participant cost trend (all 4 cost measures), shows an overall savings of approximately $264 per employee per year.