Employee Wellness Standards Locked In
The Fed’s issued their final regulations for worksite wellness programs under the Affordable Care Act this week. The final rules are designed to incentivize workplaces to develop and execute health promotion programs. The goal is to improve health and wellness among workers and to limit growth of health care costs moving forward. The regulations outline standards what they call “health-contingent [...]
Smokers Cost Employers $6K More
A new Ohio State University study found smokers cost businesses about $6,000 more than nonsmokers every year. The researchers used the cost of increased absenteeism, lost productivity, smoke breaks and health care to reach the $6K/year figure – not surprisingly, smoke breaks account for the biggest share of the cost. More and more businesses are creating stronger worksite wellness programs. Arizona, for example, has a great benefit in place [...]
What’s Our Most Popular Report?
It's called the 2011 Arizona Health Status and Vital Statistics Annual Report... and last year's report got hit upon 2,000,000 times. It gives our most granular public health information of the year including refined health statistics on pregnancies, births, reportable diseases, deaths, inpatient hospitalizations, emergency room visits, marriages, divorces and population for Arizona. The report provides critical data for health policy formulation, local, state, and federal programs [...]
Poisoning is the Leading Cause of Injury Deaths in Arizona
When you think of the leading cause of deaths related to injuries, the first thing many people will think of is car crashes. While automobile crashes can be deadly—especially when drugs and alcohol are involved—the leading cause of injury-related deaths in Arizona is poisonings. A new report we recently released shows that there were 1,144 deaths due to poisoning in [...]
To Decolonize, or Not to Decolonize
… that is the question- at least when it comes to whether to take standard measures to decolonize intensive care patients with antibiotic ointments in their nose to remove Staphylococcus bugs. Hospital associated infections are a critical public health and healthcare cost problem. While we’re losing ground in our fight against obesity- we’re making progress toward reducing healthcare associated infections [...]
Clinician Website Up and Running
I’m happy to announce that we rolled out our state-of-the-art Arizona Clinician Website this week. The site provides a one-stop-shop for Arizona clinicians. The new Clinician Website is designed specifically for clinicians, so they can go to one website and access information directly from the site. With our old system, if a physician wanted to know our clinical recommendations for [...]