HMRC home :: who we are :: cutting edge leadership…the history

Cutting edge leadership … the history

1978—Initiated the business of wellness assessment and programming and health management evaluation

1980—Started HRA development with the Centers for Disease Control

1980 to Present—The HMRC has collected health and lifestyle behavior data on over 2,000,000 individuals and consulted with over 1,000 worksites. From this broad database, we began tracking the long-term benefits of wellness, health promotion and risk reduction programs and long-term evaluations and research with the many corporations and organizations we engaged. We have become one of the nation's leading research facilities in studying the value of health.

Our efforts in health management include: organizational consulting; integrated wellness and health care cost management; developing and testing various health assessment tools such as the Health Risk Appraisal; Presenteeism Scales; Trend Management System (TMS ™) developed from our extensive research on risk/cost, Risk Cluster Analysis, and ongoing research and publications. We also host our Wellness in the Workplace Conference in March and our Corporate Consortium members in December of each year. We maintain a data warehouse and integrated datasets for each of the organizations as well as a de-identified database for the purpose of answering questions requiring larger numbers of participants.

Our operation is a faculty research laboratory. In the past 20 years, over 200 students have studied with us. The lab is funded primarily through gifts, grants, and contracts from public and private sources. The results of our work are expressed through research and technical reports appearing in journals, professional and lay magazines, and periodicals.

Direct services using the health appraisal and evaluation for decision support and data management give outcome measures focused on the economics of health. We can analyze data to support your decisions, and to examine and project health care expenses through predictive modeling based on our data and research findings.

The following chronological progress is a history of our research outcomes.

1980 HRA—Implement and disseminate HRA from CDC/Carter Center to Outcomes measure—Move from mortality outcomes to medical, pharmacy and time away from work as our primary outcome measures

1990—Consult and implement —Wellness Programs in 20+ companies

1991—High risk persons are high cost (prospective data) by individual risks and by cumulative risks (0–2, 3–4, 5+)

1993—Absenteeism shows the same relationships to risks as medical costs

1993—Excess costs are related to excess risks

1994—Cost changes follow risk changes (medical and pharmacy)

1995—Risk combinations—The most dangerous predictors of cost

1996—Low risk maintenance—An important program strategy

1996—Resource optimization—Changes in risk drive changes in cost when targeted according to specific risk combinations

1997—Benchmarking—By wellness score and company health score

1998—Program opportunities—In preventive services, low-risk maintenance, high-risk intervention and disease management

1999—Presenteeism—Introduced as a measure of productivity and influenced by risks and disease

2000—Total value of health—Define what it means to the organization

2001—Natural flow—Established for risks and costs

2002—Focus on the person—Primary to the risk or the disease

2003—Improved population health status—Result from Employer sponsored programs

2004—Health Management Scorecard—Percent participation and percent low-risk—The important elements of a Health and Productivity program

2005 Interventions—Susceptible to severe “step down” participation

2005 Presenteeism—Changes in presenteeism follow changes in risks

2006 and beyond

Health Management —A Key Component in Health Consumerism