Critique
 
Steelcase - Well, Well, Well!

The following assessment of program strengths and weaknesses has been abstracted from reviews by the Task Force on Program Selection of The Health Project. Where weaknesses are postulated, it must be taken into account that the review Task Force is very critical, that no programs are perfect, that the Award Winning programs have been selected from over 300 candidate programs and represent the very best, that the materials reviewed may have been incomplete, that suggested deficiencies may have resulted from incomplete understanding of the program by the reviewers or that any problems may have been corrected since the time of review.

Evaluation: The Steelcase Wellness Program, Well, Well, Well! believes that education and services for disease/injury prevention, early detection and rehabilitation helps families and retirees make healthier lifestyle choices, especially those at high risk. Their plan, adopted in 1983, tracks risk-cost relationships with claims of high risk workers going from $1,155 in 1985-87 to $537 in 1988-90. Projected savings from the program over ten years are roughly $20 million for nearly 9,000 employees and families.

Good relationship with an academic research organization. The University of Michigan evaluation is ongoing. The study presents the best new cost-savings data of the year. There is a thorough commitment to good quality study and excellent quasi-experimental designs. There are multiple peer-reviewed publications. This strong research evaluation contribution even made it to House and Senate deliberations. There is an important longitudinal study designed differentiating higher risk and lower risk employees and costs. The cost per participant is low. The evaluation program which tracks medical care costs and absenteeism for ten years is highly commendable. The program reaches 75 percent of the employee population. This program represents a gold standard for corporate programs.

There is an absence of primary prevention strategies. Self-selection may be built into some of the models. Medical self-care programs appear under-emphasized. The specifics of the programs utilized by Steelcase are imperfectly described. There is no data on non-participants.