Health risk assessments help you quantify employee health

Health risk assessments (HRAs) are an important tool to help you isolate the value of strong corporate wellness programs. In our twenty-plus years of health testing and analysis as EmployeeWellnessUSA and parent company HeathcheckUSA, we’ve found that executive leadership is best at assessing risk in a rigorous, bottom-line-oriented manner — which is exactly what health risk assessments do for you.

Health risk assessments: what’s an HRA?

HRAs (health risk assessments) got you mystified? They’re a bit of a puzzle because there’s no unified standard for health risk assessments. A health risk assessment is both a procedure and a document, too, depending on the context — you must answer questions and ideally undergo some simple biometric data collection to develop a document that describes what’s good and bad about your current state of health and wellness.

To add confusion to the situation, there’s a heritage of industrial health risk management to the term “health risk assessment.” Talk to an OSHA inspector about health risk assessments and she’ll assume you’re referring to an analysis of contaminants and industrial chemicals in a factory or manufacturing facility.

Health risk assessments: a typical HRA

However, even though there’s no government or agency mandate telling you what should be in your company’s health risk assessments, the employee wellness professionals at EmployeeWellnessUSA agree that a complete, comprehensive health risk assessment is aimed at producing a concrete baseline of a person’s health, and includes most of these features:

• a blood pressure test to find possible cardiovascular disease,
• a blood type test so the employee can receive prompt transfusions if an accident does happen to occur at the workplace,
• a cancer test to detect this insidious killer before it can cause harm,
• a blood glucose diabetes test that can detect this common disease, and
• a thorough investigation of the employee’s health management status.

The investigation ideally would analyze the employee’s:

• lifestyle factors,
• symptoms and ailments,
• pharmaceutical needs and prescriptions,
• functional abilities,
• quality of life,
• self-efficacy,
• fitness proclivities and interest level,
• clinical information,
• and fitness biometrics.

Health risk assessments: what next?

If your organization is pondering the costs and benefits of health risk assessments, contact a wellness expert at EmployeeWellnessUSA. We’d be happy to provide you with no-obligation advice about how to go about planning a corporate wellness program and improving the health of your workforce while augmenting morale and reducing your health insurance costs at the same time.

Here are a few more health risk assessment articles that you may find useful:

• Online health risk assessments
• Health risk assessment vendors
• Health risk assessment benefits
• Health risk assessment surveys

Health screening: knowledge is power

A health screening is one of the most important tools in the corporate wellness toolbox for improving employee health and wellness. However, it’s hard to look beyond the simple pragmatic details of an on-site health screening to understand its power for unlocking improved employee wellness, lower health insurance premiums and reduced absenteeism. Just as small, systematic changes can revolutionize an individual’s fitness, seemingly minor systematic changes within your organization - like regular health screenings - can revolutionize the fitness of the individuals who collectively are your company’s finest asset.

How health screening works

“How does one little blood test do all that?” you may be asking. Yes, a health screening looks like a simple blood test, but the fact is that a well-administered and carefully organized group blood test can enable a health screening that will isolate dozens of risk factors for you and your employees.

Health screenings, such as the health risk assessments (HRAs) performed by EmployeeWellnessUSA, produce an easy-to-read series of reports on the health hazards that threaten your workforce. Depending on the health risk tests that you choose, your health screenings can point out possible problems posed by high blood pressure, obesity, osteoporosis, cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and many other common health issues. Health screenings can also highlight dangerous levels of toxic workplace substances or industrial chemicals. Lastly, a thorough health screening, whether an on-site health screening at your campus or one arranged at one of our nationwide testing laboratories, can test for health risk management issues with illegal drugs like amphetamines, marijuana, heroin and cocaine.

The advantages of health screenings with EmployeeWellnessUSA

If you elect to work with EmployeeWellnessUSA when performing your company’s health screening, you’ll have some advantages that will make your job easier.

We’re veterans of distributed laboratory testing and our services have been written up in a variety of national publications, including TIME, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times. We bring that experience to every corporate client who chooses to partner with us for health screening.

We also use our proprietary online health management system to perform health screenings. Our system allows us to deliver online scheduling of employee tests, email reminders that work the way you do, confidential medical reports (aggregated for you, and individualized for your employees), online consent forms, health surveys, secure data handling and more. You can rely on our experience when planning your company’s health screening.

Talking to EmployeeWellnessUSA about health screening

Early detection makes a world of difference for almost all major diseases, including the big killers like cardiovascular disease and cancer. Don’t delay in setting up your organization’s health screening. The corporate wellness statistics are clear about the benefits of implementing wellness programs like health screenings. It’s worth it - both as a fiscal decision and as an initiative that will be emotionally satisfying for you and your employees. Please contact our health screening specialists for a no-obligation chat.