Managing the health of the employee

In summary, we now visualize the ideal preventive-health program as one which identifies target subpopulations with precision; intervenes in those populations with selectivity based on anticipated yield; modifies and tailors each intervention to maximize its individual effectiveness; and delivers the whole program through health-care delivery machinery that can itself be managed for maximum efficiency. This cannot be done without sophisticated information processing capability which permits the individualization of intervention. Consequently, most prevention and health maintenance efforts in the work setting are, for a time at least, going to have to be satisfied with less than ideal characteristics and less than optimum cost-effective ratios. That does not mean that there is nothing that can be done, or that all current programs are obsolete, or that no results can be achieved. It does mean that professionals and managers who are planning and directing such programs will increase their success to the extent that their programs can be made consistent with the principles involved, to the extent that all programs can be tailored to fit individual employee circumstances, and to the extent that the whole health-care management effort can be integrated into one smoothly functioning, efficient system.