From the pages of In Business magazine.
Denise O’Malley is a self-described reformed insurance agent, which came in handy when she founded You Define Wellness. Her knowledge of insurance helped her develop a new wellness model that recently debuted in Madison, one that emphasizes many different paths to wellness.
When she asks employers about their wellness programs, their faces light up and they tell her about things like “Smoothie Day,” weight-loss programs, and gym memberships. But when she asks them about staff participation, their faces become crestfallen. “Then I say, ‘Let me guess, you’re getting about 24 percent participation in your wellness program,’ and almost every one of them says, ‘How do you know my numbers?’” O’Malley says.
She has a pretty good idea because when it comes to wellness participation, there are four types of employees — the cant’s (as in can’t waits), the “shant’s,” the don’ts, and the won’ts. Typically, employers get the 24 percent who can’t wait to get started; the other 76 percent may not like what the employer is offering, they may not have the time or the money, or they have a medical condition they want treated outside the watchful eyes of their employer’s medical insurance.
Rather than cram everyone into a traditional medical wellness model, O’Malley hopes to boost participation by emphasizing more than 130 individual choices — including acupuncture, chiropractic, and mental-health services — and by combining access with educational guidance. “We bring in the buffet,” she states.
The risk is that this a la carte model will overwhelm health care consumers with its comprehensiveness. Even though she’s still in the process of building the Madison provider base, O’Malley acknowledges that risk because when people go online and visit the local provider directory, that “overwhelm” is going to take place for some. Yet with that many services, people have a chance to find an answer to their most pressing health need.
You Define Wellness is provided separately from an employer’s medical insurance in much the same way vision and dental plans are, and it’s bringing something that employees are already paying for. “There is a statistic that says 59 million Americans are spending $30.2 billion a year out of their pocket on things not covered by their medical insurance plan,” O’Malley notes. “A lot of them are joining Weight Watchers or the gyms, so this is a way to have it subsidized by the employer and combine that with the education they may need.”
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