The Psychological Benefits of Corporate Wellness Programs

What is a corporate wellness program and why should you consider adding one??

Wellness programs provide employees and employers with a variety of helpful resources necessary for improving the overall health and lifestyle of the company as a whole. Companies can customize programs as needed, choosing from a variety of tools, health assessments, reports, educational materials, and more.

The importance of mental health in particular is illustrated here in the potentially negative impact it can have on many areas of performance at work. Problems often result that affect every measure of a company’s success, from high turnover to low productivity.

The benefits of focusing on wellness are immediate, and they will build over time. A supportive work environment helps in reducing symptoms and risks of depression, at the same time increasing productivity and saving company dollars. Employees gain a greater sense of well-being and experience better health outcomes in a long list of areas, as shown in this infographic. Investing in a wellness program ultimately contributes long-term benefits to the bottom line, and to the well-being of everyone involved in the total enterprise.

Click below to embed this infographic into your website:

<img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHWO8nVFNJwSgAX4H0j2pekGbvR60EGJXIARtKY49Y-etVZhqGCZxNY2xkrmmGXBMhZtc3ZJ61GXs4Qx-H2uEcAxKzbFBN5HBO_CkOjyfev6dNv4xhz-KjLG-TSXMH3EVysyDMiLFpashT/s1600/the-psychological-benefits-of-corporate-wellness-programs-lrg.jpg" alt="The Benefits of Having A Wellness Program" title="The Benefits of Having A Wellness Program" /><br /><a href="http://wellsourceinc.blogspot.com/2015/09/the-psychological-benefits-of-corporate.html" title="The Psychological Benefits of Corporate Wellness Programs" >The Psychological Benefits of Corporate Wellness Programs</a>

Workplace Health Programs Lead to Fewer Obese Employees

There are plenty of reasons why employers should be concerned about the health of their employees. Workers who eat well, get exercise, and lead overall healthy lives are more productive, get sick less frequently, and cost their employers less in health expenses. Company wellness programs like those offered by Wellsource are designed with this in mind – by investing in the health of the people who work for them, businesses end up saving money in the long run and being more profitable. According to a recent study, the companies that invest in these programs are seeing results.

A recently completed study revealed that 17% of young “millennial” employees at workplaces that encouraged employees to follow multiple healthy lifestyle practices, were clinically obese. At companies that only promoted one kind of healthy lifestyle choice, or did not promote healthy living to employees at all, that number jumped to 24%. The study was conducted over a 10-year period, with participants answering an initial set of questions about their health choices in middle school and high school, and then answering another round of questions after they had entered the workforce.

The study also found that many employees reported eating fast food, drinking sugary drinks, and making other poor diet choices because they were conveniently available. In other words, unhealthy lifestyle choices are often the result of our environment – when unhealthy food is the most convenient option at work, many employees will choose eating poorly over spending the extra time and energy that it would take to eat something healthier.

Does your workplace need to improve its lifestyle advocacy efforts? Wellsource can help! Call us today at 800-533-9355.

Sources

1. http://ewn.co.za/2015/08/31/Healthy-workplace-tied-to-fewer-obese-young-workers

Keeping Your IIS Site Online

If you are hosting a site with Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) 7.0, you should be aware of a potential bug that could take your site offline.

IIS may not always get along with your antivirus updates. DHIT recently encountered an issue in which a McAfee antivirus update causes a key DLL to stop loading and IIS Application Pool to stop, which consequently disables website hosting. When attempting to load an IIS-administered site, you will see a  503 error (Service Unavailable):

Error caused by IIS issue

The particular issue may arise if a component of your antivirus software is removed or expired. For example, your McAfee Host Intrusion Prevention client could be inadvertently updated without all necessary components, uninstalled or otherwise corrupted.

The fix for this issue is quick (and relatively painless), involving a few edits to the applicationHost configuration file.

There are other, related IIS issues detailed in Microsoft support documentation here.

While the fix for this bug straightforward, catching these issues in a timely manner may not be. DHIT uses Microsoft Internet Information Services in a variety of implementations for our applications and has experience ensuring hosting stability.

We recommend not only staying current on Windows and antivirus software updates, but also maintaining a level of support to ensure that potential issues are monitored and remedied quickly to minimize downtime and vulnerability.

DHIT offers tiers of support to accommodate not only ongoing software customization but server continuity. Please contact us with any questions about this issue and keep your health data environment running smoothly.  

How Snacking at Work Really Affects Employee Health

Everyone has eaten a midday snack at their work desk before, and most of us think little about how that extra food is impacting our health. It turns out it’s probably doing more damage to our bodies than we think. According to the USDA, most Americans are adding 400 calories to their daily intake just with the snacks they eat between meals. That might not seem like much on its own, but when all those extra calories are added up over a week, a month, or a year, it starts to look like a more serious problem.

So what can be done, aside from removing snack time from our daily schedules? Here are a few suggestions for how to snack a little smarter:

• Stay hydrated – There are lots of good reasons to drink the recommended 8 cups of water a day, and one of them is that drinking water makes us feel full. If you find yourself feeling hungry between meals or eating more than one snack during the day, try drinking more water.
• Less chips, more fruit – Many people look at their daily snack as a time to indulge in a bit of junk food like chips or candy bars. Instead of choosing something full of sugar, fat, or salt, use snack time to make sure that you’re eating your recommended daily helping of fruit and vegetables. Apples and grapes, in particular, are healthy options that are easy to eat at your desk.
• Stay off of social media – If you’re like most Americans, you have at least one friend who loves to fill their Facebook and Twitter feeds with all the delicious recipes they want to try. If you’re finding yourself hungry between meals, it might be because your social media feed is tempting you.

Want more great worksite wellness tips? Contact Wellsource today at 800-533-9355.

Sources

• http://www.9and10news.com/story/29925609/healthy-living-good-snacks-between-meals

Unclogging Data in Health IT

There has been much controversy in the Health IT world over the issue of “data blocking” – to what extent it truly exists and, if so, what to do about it.

It’s worth noting first that the magnitude of this problem may be exaggerated. As recently reported by ONC, an analysis of a nationwide survey of hospitals showed some heartening results:

(N)ear universal adoption of EHRs by hospitals and significant increases in hospitals’ electronically exchanging health information with outside providers compared to past years.In addition, there are a number of technologies available – including DIRECT protocol – that are widely available, easy to implement, but simply underused.

However, even if the extent to which systems are actively obstructing the flow is overblown, there is much work to be done. In testimony before the Senate’s HELP Committee on the subject of health IT “data blocking,” Dr. David C Kendrick – who leads MyHealth Access Network (a non‐profit health information exchange organization in Oklahoma) – provided some helpful guideposts.

Dr. Kendrick first gave a succinct and workable definition of interoperability, in which patients “have their complete, longitudinal medical record available wherever and whenever decisions are made about their health.”

Dr. David C. Kendrick offers testimony before
Senate HELP Committee on Thursday, July 23, 2015.

Kendrick went on to list drivers of data obstruction culled from his experience. Some specific examples include:

• Excessive interface and maintenance costs 
• “Hotel California” problem: vendors do not offer data portability as intended by ONC, so customers “can check out other EHR products any time they like, but their data can never leave” 
• "Garbage in Garbage Out”: Poor data quality and standardization
• EHR-centered development that extends interoperability only to EHR+its partners
• Vendors achieving certification with one feature set, but features are not fully delivered post-certification

In one of the most striking moments in the testimony, Kendrick declared that MyHealth has “never seen a completely correct Patient Care Summary despite processing millions of them.” 

Where data blocking persists, incentives are lacking for collaboration. In Kendrick’s experience, provider-based blocking was a challenge early in the existence of MyHealth, but the problem has “quickly receded as value‐based payment models take hold.” “Data blocking,” on the whole, may simply be a more loaded term for the obstacles that exist in pursuit of the Holy Grail of interoperability.

It’s not easy developing a universal secondary language for health care. But it is up to health IT developers not to settle for “just good enough to pass." As an industry, we now know the ideal to which we are striving and the major barriers.

And while software developers are not policymakers, we can offer our own set of incentives for interoperability through ease of use, affordability and functionality that goes beyond mere compliance.  A good place to start is putting data-sharing front-and-center in our applications.

How “Toxic” Work Environments Hurt Employee Health

The relationship between employees and the company they work for can be a delicate one, with both parties needing to balance their own needs with what the other expects from them. When the right balance is met between the demands of an employer and the emotional wellbeing of their workers, the relationship is fulfilling and profitable for everyone. But when employees feel like they are in a “toxic” work environment, it can have a negative impact not just on their mental health, but their physical health as well.

It’s no secret that stress, anger, and other negative emotions can have physical effects on the body, including increased blood pressure and depression. This extends to the workplace as well. In a study by the Journal of the American Medical Association, it was found that employees who feel like they have little control over their work environment, or who feel they are not supported by coworkers or employers, are four times more likely to die from heart disease, and twice as likely to suffer from depression.

More than that, though, it was found that employees who feel they work in a toxic environment feel little connection to their employer: 72% of highly stressed employees report having a low connection to work. On the other hand, employees who feel a high level of connection between themselves and their employer report feeling committed to achieving company goals, and are 70% less likely to feel stressed out by their jobs.

In other words, workplace wellness doesn’t stop at exercise incentives and lessons in nutrition. Creating a space where employees feel valued by their employer and supported by their coworkers improves not only the health of the people who work for your company, but the health of the company itself.

Sign up with Wellsource today by calling 800-533-9355.

Sources

1. http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=381339
2. http://fortune.com/2015/08/25/toxic-workplace-could-destroy-health/

Work Safety Tips for Summer

Summer is in full swing, and that means it’s time for summer health tips for the workplace! As part of your corporate wellness program, integrate these great summer health tips into your company’s daily work routine:

• Make sure everyone drinks plenty of fluids – Think that people won’t get dehydrated sitting at a desk all day? Think again. Many people don’t drink the recommended 8 cups of water per day to begin with. Combine that with the summer heat, and you have a situation where people can easily become dehydrated, even indoors. Employees should have easy access to water and other fluids to keep themselves hydrated and healthy for work.
• Avoid caffeine and sugar – As a supplementary note to making sure employees are drinking enough fluids, it should also be remembered that caffeine and sugary drinks should be avoided or kept to a minimum. Sugar and caffeine make people more dehydrated. Encourage people to stick to water or juice instead.
• Check the ventilation – A proper workplace should have plenty of ventilation to allow air to circulate. Good air circulation keeps the temperature down, even if the building doesn’t have an air conditioner unit. If the building needs better circulation, open the windows and use fans to keep the air moving as much as possible (as long as it doesn’t distract people from their work).
• Remember the sunscreen – Depending on where you live, even a little bit of exposure to the summer sun can result in sunburn and other negative health effects. Encourage employees to wear sunscreen before they leave for work and before they go home.

Learn more about improving your workplace health practices by calling Wellsource today at 800-533-9355.