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Companies make many types of investments in their business' future; health benefits certainly is a key one. And like any smart approach, it makes sense to protect that investment against risks — at the least the one's you can prepare for.

This plan is discussed in a Benefits Pro piece titled, “5 risk factors that threaten your health benefit investment: How metabolic syndrome costs employees and why workplace health promotion helps.” The piece states: “When looking at any given organization’s population of employees, people with three or more of the following risk factors (smoking, obesity, hypertension, hypercholesterolemia, and diabetes) have health care claims that are double those of people with no risk factors.”

As the piece, authored by Dr. Paul Mulhausen, notes, various workplace wellness studies have examined “the relationship between employee health risk and health care value.” Findings included:

• “Cost followed risk.”
• “The greatest reductions in average health care costs occurred in employees who moved from high-risk to low-risk status, and the largest increase in costs occurred in employees who moved from low-risk to high-risk health status.”
• “The road to health care value must include the measures that bring better health to individuals and ultimately lead to lower medical costs.”

So what would happen if companies and employees could better understand various metabolic risks?

“Metabolic syndrome is the term used to describe a group of metabolic risk factors that raise a person’s risk of heart disease, diabetes, stroke and other health problems. The five metabolic risk factors described by the term metabolic syndrome include a large waistline, high blood triglyceride levels, a low HDL (“good”) cholesterol level, high blood pressure, and a high fasting blood sugar.”

The piece notes that workplace wellness programs could potentially help identify — and even address — some of these risks. It concludes:

• “Despite the potential impact on the value of the health care benefit investment, measures specifically targeting the metabolic syndrome continue to be largely under-utilized in the workplace.”
• “Programs that help employees achieve aggressive lifestyle modifications have been effective in improvement of the employees’ health risks, including those metabolic risks that make up the metabolic syndrome.”
• “Focused programming for employees with metabolic syndrome in reducing metabolic risks holds great potential as a high value health benefit investment—for improved health and vitality with improved cost outcomes.”