Wellness Outcomes Measurement -- for Card-Carrying Grown-Ups

Have you ever wondered whether those ROIs that vendors and consultants show you for wellness and disease management are even remotely accurate? Well, you can wonder no longer: Most of the numbers are made up.

Al Lewis, author of the critically acclaimed new book Why Nobody Believes the Numbers: Distinguishing Fact from Fiction in Population Heath Management, will confirm the doubts of a growing chorus of realists with many enlightening and sometimes hilarious examples of employers whose stellar results were simply miscalculated, along with a rogue’s gallery of vendors and consultants whose “results” are fictional to the point of mathematical impossibility. In one case, a major vendor is shown blatantly lying, specifically to fool consultants and HR executives.

This is happening to you too, not just to others. Today you are spending a lot of money on these programs and incentives, in order to avoid preventable health-sensitive medical events that increase claims cost and reduce productivity. Yet not only has your vendor or consultant never measured your change in health-sensitive medical events, but no vendor or consultant has ever even made a list of health-sensitive medical events to measure.

That doesn’t stop them from claiming savings -- many vendors and consultants will just credit the wellness program for a reduction in the trend of health expenses, because in their view wellness dramatically reduces health spending across the board. But when was the last time you or anyone you know incurred an ER visit or hospital stay that could have been avoided if you by completing a health risk assessment and talking to a coach?

This webinar is not “an alternative view of wellness outcomes” – it’s a proof. The webinar will show corporate executives exactly why vendors and consultants dramatically overstate the impact of these programs, leading you to over-spend on vendors and consultants and incentives.

Further, Al is offering both a $10,000 reward to anyone who can find an invalidating mistake in this proof (see his website www.dismgmt.com for details), and/or a free Wellness Savings Calculator (normally $99) to any HR executive who, following this webinar, still thinks their vendor or consultant is correct in showing massive savings.

How to solve the problem? This webinar will also provide the tools for HR executives to estimate the impact of wellness on their own, without relying on vendors or consultants, using the Seven Rules of Plausibility described in Why Nobody Believes the Numbers. You will learn how to:

• Distinguish valid from invalid results
• Measure risk reduction validly in your organization
• Tie reductions in risk to reductions in health-sensitive medical events
• Present and defend your findings to the CFO
• Ask the right questions of your vendor and consultant…and know when you’re getting the right answer
• Write RFPs and contracts that prevent vendors from taking advantage of you

Further, this webinar counts towards professional certification in Critical Outcomes Report Analysis http://dismgmt.com/certs/cora/self-study, the field’s only recognized credential in wellness/disease management analytics. Putting a staff member(s) through this certification will end your reliance on others for calculating outcomes.

The bubble for wellness savings claims is already bursting. Read what CEO of The Leapfrog Group, arguably the most prestigious think tank/advocacy organization in health care, has just said about highly suspect wellness ROIs . Once a few more leading-edge CFOs read Al’s book (or related articles by other thought leaders) and start asking uncomfortable questions to the HR Department. By attending this webinar, HR executives will take the first step in answering them. HR Executives will see that those wellness vendors -- and the brokers and consultants who enable them -- have, in the immortal words of the great philosopher Ricky Ricardo, a lot of 'splaining to do.

HR EVP, VP/Director of Benefit, Wellness Coordinators, Anyone Who Measures Outcomes or Who Has “Finance” in Their Titles, Benefits Consultants, Vendors of Wellness and Disease Management

1. Why ROIs from these programs are invariably far overstated by vendors and consultants
2. What these programs really save, over what time frame, at what cost
3. How you can estimate your own outcomes without fancy math or consultants…and without relying on vendors

Why Nobody Believes the Numbers: Distinguishing Fact from Fiction in Population Health Management, the critically acclaimed expose of vendor and consultant outcomes measurement, and their incentives to overstate your ROIs (John Wiley & Sons, 2012). The introduction may be downloaded Click here

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