Work-site wellness: a model hospital-operated program

Work-site wellness programs are hardly new to most US healthcare markets. Emerging out of the 1980s fitness craze, traditional wellness programs usually consisted of classes that encouraged healthy lifestyle practices among company employees. Since the prevalent fee-for-service environment didn't provide an inherent incentive for keeping people well, hospital-operated work-site wellness programs rarely advanced past this basic level of service. Corporations, payers, and hospitals see the economic value of managing health, therefore, these types of programs are becoming a part of hospital delivery systems and a growing revenue center. This article presents a hospital-operated, work-site wellness model that was developed for the WorkingWell Network, the corporate wellness program offered by The Methodist Hospitals, Inc. (Gary and Merrillville, IN).