The Need for Strategic Planning for Prevention Programs

In the past 25 years of supporting employers in the calculation of the ROI of their prevention programs, I have been continually surprised at the ad hoc manner in which prevention programs are selected and implemented. Sometimes I see imbalances between programs focused on physical issues versus behavioral issues, or too many programs focused on the same issue, but lacking in others. There is a need for better strategic planning

Most other departments within employers develop strategic plans for their departments, whether it be Operations, Manufacturing, Sales, and for expansion plans, but is rare to see one for prevention programs implemented by HR, Benefits, or Occupational Medicine, leading to a kind of “Shoot, Ready, Aim” approach to preventing physical, behavioral, and occupational injuries, and conditions.

This leads to difficulties in obtaining approval of programs by administrative and financial personnel, who continually ask the following questions (which would be addressed by a strategic plan):

• What are the main issues faced by our employees, both short and long term?
• If there are many diseases or conditions, which ones impact our internal costs the most?
• If we consider our internal costs of disease, such as productivity and turnover costs, instead of just the medical costs or the impact on insurance premiums, does the priority change?
• What should be the balance between programs that resolve issues quickly (e.g., an EAP program that addresses short term issues) versus those that take longer to work (e.g., for high-risk employees)?
• Why do you have so many programs focused on the same disease or condition?
• Assuming that a single program impacts various diseases or conditions, how do you measure the impact on each?
• Granted that there are many alternative prevention programs for each condition, why did you choose the ones that you did?
• What is the ROI and Internal Rate of Return of each prevention program?
• Who are the target employees?
• What is the minimum participation and effectiveness rates to break even on the investment?
• How do you measure success?

Read more: How to Convert Wellbeing Programs into Investments

In the following paragraphs, I’ll explain how to provide a theoretical approach to Strategic Planning for the prevention of disease in three steps, called Ready, Aim, Shoot!

Step One: Ready – Identifying the Problems and how to solve them.

First of all, we need to identify the major disease states or conditions by analyses of actual or expected risk factors or prevalence rates. Then, we must quantify the costs associated with the incidence (internal or economic costs such as productivity losses, turnover, disability/claims, impact on health plan premiums, and accident costs). Following this, we must create a comprehensive list of potential programs focused on the major diseases or conditions.

Step Two: Aim – Selecting the Best Option with ROI

Now we need to compare the programs based on ROI (WELLCAST ROI™ simulations are run with various scenarios of price, participation, and effectiveness rates to determine respective ROIs). Subsequently, we’ll need to select the programs based on the results of the simulations. The original list is whittled down, and specific programs are selected for each disease state or condition. Note that WELLCAST ROI considers the fact that several programs affect various diseases and accounts for the cumulative effect.

Afterward, it’s necessary to obtain approval for programs based on ROI, and identify who will be conducting the programs, either In-house personnel or third-party vendors.

And, to conclude, we’ll have to prepare and communicate campaigns by Identifying target populations for each program, and, after that, prepare promotional materials and communicate the necessity of the program.

Step Three: Shoot – Program Implementation and Analysis

With all the above steps concluded, it’s time to implement the programs and measure their progress in reducing risk factors or disease/condition incidence.

With that in mind, we can now convert program progress and effectiveness (e.g., reduction of risk factors) into monetary terms (ROI). Hence, we’ll be able to periodically perform variance analyses by comparing actual reductions with the plan’s expectations, and then, convert variances into monetary terms.

Further details are contained on our website, www.wellcastroi.com