Ivy Hartman: America health care crisis is affecting businesses in all industries and in all sizes. And small firms often had it hard by health care cost that our guest today have some business, some steps for business owners that you can take today to immediately reduce health care cost. Our guest are the co-authors “Discover Wellness” how staying healthy can make you rich. I would like to welcome Dr. Jason Deitch and Dr. Bob Hoffman sbtv.com.
Dr. Bob Hoffman: Thank you.
Dr. Jason Deitch: Thanks for having us.
Ivy Hartman: Well lets jump right in, what are some of the first things employers should do to start reducing their health care cost.
Dr. Jason Deitch: You know the most important thing an employer can do to start reducing their health care cost is to start letting people know that it’s important to be healthy and to be well. They have to lead from the top and lead by example. The best way to reduce the cost of our health care system is to stay out of the system. And so by creating programs incentives, teams and community within a small business and actually promotes better health through better living is the most effective way to begin the process of initiating and starting to save cost within their health care bill.
Dr. Bob Hoffman: And some of the practical steps is read the book.
Ivy Hartman: Right.
Dr. Bob Hoffman: Share the book with your employees, start to implement some competition or games amongst your employees, you know who could loose the most weight. Or what divisions within the company can loose the most weight, who’s starting an exercise program by them pedometers that they can put on and see how many steps they take everyday and can we increase the number of steps. Is there a time during the day that they can have a time of intersection or meditation, stress management? Could you bring in a massage therapist to do five or 15 minutes massages of key employees who’ve earned that. It’s an endless process it just depends on how intense the CEO of the company wants to drive this wellness.
But ones you learn the statistics and the cost involved and the productivity you would actually have to be crazy not to want to want to jump into the depend of this pool.
Ivy Hartman: Well what are some of the benefits other than cost savings for small businesses who implement some of this program?
Dr. Jason Deitch: You know the benefits really are wide ranging. Everything from direct saving of health care cost, to reduce absentees, from reduce presenters, an increase productivity.
Dr. Bob Hoffman: Could you explain what presenters on this?
Dr. Jason Deitch: Abosoultely, presenters is when people actually are present at work but are less productive than they should be and I would argue in fact sometimes counter productive. I would rather somebody not show up, than show up and make mistakes, show up and turn off costumers, show up and actually keep other people from being productive and it’s a play most employer knows they would rather. So this is a major problem and terms of the research their showing that there is typically, approximately a six to one return conservatively for every dollar invested in a wellness program with two to three times the savings on a soft services like presenters and absentee. It is an absolute no brainier, no most small business employers specially think they can afford this types of programs, I will guarantee you cant afford not to maybe make it sure you're employees are at their peek performance.
Dr. Bob Hoffman: And some employers are afraid even get started, which is silly. Because they think they might be at a shape or they're not the healthiest role model but they actually have put themselves in an incredible position to lead by example.
Dr. Jason Deitch: That’s right.
Dr. Bob Hoffman: You know if they decide to loose some weight or they joined the gym and started going three or four times a week working on their target heart rate into their cardiovascular health. If they stop smoking or stop drinking 12 cups of coffee a day and only reduce it to two or three. There is demonstration to the people that you're leading that you're leading this revolution. And that’s a very important signal and sign to the people who are your employees. And then get them involved, educate them and the process again is up to each employer. That’s why we consult with employers of small business because sometime just doing a health assessment, a computer driven health assessment wakes people up and alerts them to what their doing right and wrong, it gives them easy action steps. Its unbelievably easy to do which inexpensive and studies have clearly shown by just doing a health assessment dramatically reduce your health care cost.
And then usually if you take one or two actions above and beyond the health assessment, it radically reduces your health care cost. So its easy to get involved, everyone should get involved it’s the right thing to do, its consistent with our culture. Look right now during the presidential election, the number one domestic issue in America is health care. It’s health care.
Ivy Hartman: Always, yeah.
Dr. Jason Deitch: And every business owner knows it.
Dr. Bob Hoffman: And every business owner knows it and every business owners is being affected by the out of control cost of health care. They are looking to raise deductibles and slice deductibles. And they're trying to make employee more responsible from deductible, well were running out of room and it hasn’t worked. There has got to be a different game, a different process and we believed we’ve document to that in the book and in our consulting services.
Ivy Hartman: Well obviously cost reduction, you know increase motivation things like that and productivity at work, great incentives for the employer. Let’s talked about the employees then of work, which is a pitting in a wellness program.
Dr. Jason Deitch: The title of the book is Discover Wellness how staying healthy can make you rich and that’s really we mean rich in every cents of the word. So we know—again Harvard University has documented that over 50% of all personal bankruptcies are related to medical depth. Personal medical depth which means that the best thing you can do to prevent that is to make sure that you're as healthy as you possibly can be but it really goes far beyond that.
The reality is that that the richness of life has everything to do with being healthy and being well. And when employers in fact give access and opportunity to people, to have those types of opportunities and tools at their disposal as opposed to many traditional work environments that are over stressed and actually cost health problems not support and unhealthy life style. You actually attract tremendous amount to great talent but most importantly you're creating an opportunity for people to be their very best.
Dr. Bob Hoffman: And when people are at their very best they produce the very best, they enjoy their work, they find their purpose in the passionate work. They're best recruiters for new employees, it again, it is a process that just keeps on folding itself. There is no down side to helping your employees get healthier and become more well, there is no down side for the employee and there is no down side for the employer or the business itself. But you got to get started, you’ve got to take action and taking actions relatively simple just start.
Ivy Hartman: Thank you both for being here today and if you’d like more information about how you can implement a program or how you can get them to touch with the doctors that they can help you with that. You can reach them at DiscoverWellnessCenter.com, and also you can pick up their best selling book Discover Wellness how staying healthy can make you rich, because we don’t often realized how rich we are in life as Dr. Deitch had said until we loose our good health.
Dr. Jason Deitch: Yeah.
Ivy Hartman: Thank you both again for being sbtv.com, keep it right here at sbtv.com where small business is our only business.
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