Wellness ZENter Recap, April 24
Employee health took center stage during Monday’s Wellness ZENter presentations at RIMS. Dave North, President and CEO at Sedgwick, kicked off the day with a corporate wellness discussion with Shawn Leavitt, Senior Vice President of Global Benefits at Comcast. They highlighted the importance of wellness for individuals and populations, and how health and productivity impact business performance.
The risk management industry has built an entire infrastructure around trying to take care of injured employees in an efficient way, but it has become complex for the employee with multiple phone numbers to call and forms to fill out. Accolade offers a way to keep the complexities behind the scenes and put the employee at the forefront. As a part of their program, each employee on an employers’ benefit plan is assigned a trained health assistant who helps them with issues such as finding a doctor, understanding a diagnosis, getting a second opinion, or figuring out which bills are supposed to be paid. Comcast began working with Accolade to help bring all of their employee benefit programs together. The health assistant serves as a single resource for all health-related questions and concerns for the employee and their family members.
The advanced technology combined with the health assistant’s compassionate approach helps personalize and enhance the experience for the employee. Working together, the data that Sedgwick has gathered can be integrated with the information that Accolade has captured. Integrating group health, workers’ compensation and disability offers benefits that can help people get back to work faster. They discussed the importance of having access to all of the same benefits no matter how an employee is injured
Rob Cavanaugh, President of Accolade joined Kimberly George, Senior Vice President of Corporate Development, M&A, and Healthcare at Sedgwick, and Shawn to discuss how the three pillars of health – physical, emotional and financial – play a role in achieving wellness. The health assistant can help the employee with problems that may be uncovered during the call like concerns about paying for prescriptions. With Accolade’s program, the health assistant ensures the employee is never given another phone number or another app; and never has to think about where to go to next. They also inform the employee about all of the benefits and resources available to them based on their situation and medical needs.