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Greetings!
So, this issue will bring you news about people with a long history in the on-site business, about funding available from, of all places, the Federal Government, and about on-line health records. It's summertime, the holiday weekend is ahead. We hope you can take a break from busy schedules and enjoy it.
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Change, Transition, and Good-bye
| | Jim Dobson, who brought Disneyland into the on-site clinic realm, is being promoted to the role of Manager, Worldwide Safety Integration, within Disney Parks & Resorts. He will be responsible for the execution of key safety work-stream projects and implementation of global initiatives that span multiple sites and types of business operations within Disney's Parks & Resorts business segment. Jim has been active with Disney at WDW in Orlando where he initiated the Center for Living Well. This is a full-service, on-site clinic operation that serves some 30,000 Disney cast members from the theme park.
John Neuberger, who has been with QuadMed, LLC from its inception, has also accepted an internal corporate promotion. He is moving to the parent company, Quad/Graphics, to assume the role of Director for Client Partnerships. In this position, he will have a hand in the redesign of Quad/Graphics' health plan to accommodate the larger base of employees and sites that they have brought on in their recent acquisitions. As readers, you may know that Quad/Graphics has more than doubled in size in this past year and also went public. The task now is to coordinate all of the firm's health and wellness vendors to knit together the an optimal network and set of providers for the corporation. Many know that John has an HR background, experience in hospitals and health networks, and that he understands employer health care challenges from a number of different angles.
Congratulations to both Jim and John. We wish them well in their new positions.
On a sad note, we mention the passing of Dr. Bill Wanago, Medical Director of CHS in the New York region. Dr. Wanago established a national reputation in occupational health, working with a number of industry and government agencies. He was very influential in the development of policy and practice standards at the corporate level for Comprehensive Health Services, Inc., as well as the creation of their quality control, outcomes, and performance benchmarking efforts. In addition, he was a major contributor to the development of their trademark service line, HybridHealth. Dr. Wanago was board-certified in Occupational and Internal Medicine, and he was the recipient of the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine's (ACOEM) President's Award. He chaired the examiner's committee for ACOEM's "Corporate Health Achievement Award," and he was the past president of the New York Occupational Medicine Association, as well as holding key positions with a number of other national and regional associations.
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DHHS Offers Funding for "Comprehensive Workplace Health Promotion Programs"
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As a part of the Affordable Care Act and the Prevention and Public Health Fund it created, the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services is making available $10M dollars to entities that "establish and evaluate comprehensive workplace health promotion programs . . . to improve the health of American workers and their families."
Employers, if you haven't jumped in, now may be the time. Vendors, this may be the way to validate what you are doing at a national level and create new and innovative ways to improve the health of millions with some of the costs underwritten by the Federal Government.
Per the press release, the focus of programs should include promotion of increased physical activity, healthier nutrition, and smoking cessation. To apply, go to www.fbo.gov. The deadline is 08/08/2011 - coming right up!
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Modern Healthcare Reports on Resurgence of On-Site Clinics
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Modern Healthcare, a publication that covers current news for hospitals and healthcare system leaders, reports a resurgence in on-site clinic activity (May 30, 2011 issue). This is important for two reasons - it shows health system interest in this trend, and it confirms what many of us think is happening.
The article cites a number of sources including Cisco, Quad/Graphics, and Marathon Health. It gives a good overview of the reasons that employers are moving more of the healthcare solution in-house. The implication for all of us is that articles of this nature in healthcare industry-oriented publications will alert hospitals to the existence of a new delivery mechanism and bring more of them to the table in an attempt to join the already confusing field of vendors and vendor options.
While we welcome the interest (and validation) that this implies, we can only suggest that the employer/buyer should beware and be aware; the provision of on-site service programming is not business as usual, and many hospitals just don't understand that. However, for the few that do, linking with your local healthcare system may be an option worthy of consideration.
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Association Update - What's in a Name?
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After a little jockeying around, we finally hit upon a name for the national association. And the winner is: National Association of Worksite Health Centers ("NAWHC"). We are coordinating with a charter board (now that this has been incorporated), and we will have allot of information available in our next newsletter (mid-July) as well as at the conferences that are being held in late July. If you are a regular reader, you will be the first to know and on the inside track. We commend the hard work that Larry Boress and the Midwest Business Group on Health are doing with their many contacts and support systems to make this important initiative a success.
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Bits and pieces, in closing: BC/BS of Arkansas hired Healthstat to manage an on-site clinic for its employees and dependents. WeCare is slated to manage clinics for Tippecanoe School Corporation in Indiana with the clinics opening this fall. In addition, we came across another vendor we had not known about until this past week, IMWell Health, LLC.
And, finally, our motto is "We've been wrong before." Google is abandoning Google HEALTH. Once we thought this would become a major factor in the consolidation of health care information. . . so did Google. We never changed our view of the landscape and several other organizations and RHIO's committed to this platform. Google, however, did change its mind - Microsoft HealthVault anyone?
Sincerely,
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ON-SITE CLINIC NEWSLETTER
