Doing poorly on wellness

I have the highest regards for Diane Rehm and her radio show, which originates at WAMU and is syndicated nationally.  How disappointing, then, to listen to her recent show, "Wellness Programs in the Workplace."  Much of the show was based on unsupported assertions about the value of wellness programs.  Statistics were bandied about with little plausibility, starting with this particularly meaningless and unprovable one:  "Forty percent of Americans die prematurely."

As radio, too, it was uninteresting, with no one invited to present the other side.  For example, they might have invited Tom Emerick or Al Lewis, whose recent book Cracking Health Costs sets forth the methodological flaws used by those who will try to convince you that prevention and wellness companies will save your company money.

In one segment of the radio show, mention was made of the C. Everett Koop Award, given for promoting better health while cutting medical costs.  But no one mentioned the controversy surrounding one of the awardees, the state of Nebraska.  The Nebraska state employee wellness program had said it saved $4.2 million, caught more than 500 early cancers and improved the health of thousands of employees in its first two years.  But, on July 15, the Omaha World-Herald published a story reporting that Al Lewis had found methodological flaws in their data.  He said,  “The bottom line is their numbers don't add up."

The article noted:

State Auditor Mike Foley also has been skeptical of the savings reported for Nebraska's wellness program.  In an audit last year, he called for the state to analyze whether the program's financial benefits outweigh the added administrative costs. 

Lewis and his colleagues believe the Koop award committee should rescind the award.  They state:

The state of Nebraska and their vendor, Health Fitness Corporation, lied about their cancer incidence late, claiming 514 "life-saving catches" of people with cancer, that were also "cost-saving," in order to get more state funding and public support. It turns out that almost all of these people did not have cancer, but only benign polyps that many adults of a certain age get. A few turn into cancer, just like a few people with high cholesterol get heart attacks, but to call these cases cancers and take credit for "life-saving catches" is a lie, equivalent to saying that people with high cholesterol had heart attacks.

They point out that the state claimed $4.2 million in savings even though only 186 people's risk declined, and claimed a 3% reduction in use of chronic disease medications even though they diagnosed an extra 40% of the population with a chronic disease needing medication.

Here's hoping Diane Rehm will revisit the issue on her radio show and that other commentators, too, will offer a more balanced view of these matters.