With the intention of improving the status of diabetes of their employees and that they have a better productivity at work, the retail company Walmart and the triple S insurer joined to create a health program that attended that chronic disease.
In the initiative, which began in 2015 as a pilot program, and then extended to all the employees of the chain, 235 have participated, of which 76% of them are still active.Those who have left (24%) are because they no longer work in the company or because they work in distant areas and make it difficult to go to the metropolitan area of appointments with the multidisciplinary team of health specialists, said Isabel Soto Albors, director ofTotal Rewards & AMP;Megacadena compliance.
Walmart has 14,700 employees on the island, and almost 70% of them qualify for medical plan.The program, called living healthy, is voluntary and does not entail an additional cost for the worker, said Soto Albors.
However, it has a higher initial cost, since it includes multidisciplinary visits with doctors, nutritionist and psychologist, in addition to continuous monitoring to the patient, but Walmart assumed that cost, since in the long run the corporation obtains better results, said theExecutive
In fact, until now nine out of 10 participants reduced blood sugar;six out of 10, its body mass;and five out of 10, cholesterol.Beyond improving their health, "employees are increasing their productivity and demonstrating a better commitment to the company," added Soto Albors.
José Novoa, main medical officer of Triple S, explained that when Walmart approached them, they saw the opportunity to go beyond the traditional disease management programs, whose contact with the patient is mostly by phone.Thus it was that they joined the Salus clinic, the triple S clinical arm, and it developed the program based on the protocols of the Mayo Clinic, to which they recently added biomonitoring.
Biomonitoring is a technology that operates 24 hours, seven days, and that allows clinical staff to know when one of the patients has out of control and thus be able to take the necessary action, Novoa explained."Part of the success (to live healthy) is that participants receive all services, from laboratories to guidance on physical activity, in one place, by a multidisciplinary and integrated group, in a clinic that uses electronic medical record," said theGalen.He added that this contributes to the patient's quality of life and to reduce visits to emergency rooms.
“We have impressive success cases.Associates who were about to disappear or who could not visit their family because they could not ride a plane because of their weight, they have now recovered their quality of life, ”said Soto-Albors, who said they will now replicate this model for employeeswith hypertension.
Walmart and Triple S will present a conversation about living healthy at the Annual Conference of the Society for Human Resources Management on Friday, September 16 at the El Conquistador Hotel in Fajardo.
