Mayor extends wellness deal despite IG concerns
Sixteen months ago, Inspector General Joe Ferguson raised “serious questions” about whether Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s highly touted wellness program was “achieving any demonstrable benefits or whether it will ever do so.”
Now Emanuel has granted a one- year extension to Healthways SC LLC at a $ 5.8 million price tag, nearly double the annual cost of the expiring agreement, with a few tweaks in hopes of getting more bang for the city’s buck.
All participating employees will be required to participate in a biometric screening, well- being assessment and health adviser call.
But only those identified as high risk will be required to get health coaching, attend on- site classes, read about health- related topics, participate in disease care and management programs or use the wellness portal to track health activities.
“This is a change ... to foster improvements and success for the most at- risk employees. The disease or care management program focuses resources only on highrisk participants,” Mary Kay Accurso, a spokesperson for the city’s Office of Budget and Management, wrote in an email to the Chicago Sun- Times.
Emanuel campaigned on a promise to save $ 20 million in 2012 — and $ 240 million over four years — by riding herd over costly but controllable problems like diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease and asthma. Obesity is also a contributor. So is heavy smoking.
At the time, Chicago taxpayers were spending $ 500 million a year to provide health care for city employees, nearly 10 percent of the city’s annual budget. Four percent of the city’s workforce was driving 60 percent of the annual expense.
The mayor’s incentiveladen health and-wellness plan called for the city to raise monthly health insurance premiums by $ 50 for employees who fail to participate in a program to manage chronic health problems.
The carrot- and- stick approach was enough to persuade an overwhelming majority of eligible city employees and their spouses to sign on.
But in his August 2015 advisory, Ferguson accused Emanuel of dropping the ball and being long on rhetoric and short on followthrough.
The company, then known as American Healthways Services LLC, was being paid $ 3 million a year — and $ 10.5 million over a three- year period — but the city had failed to measure whether the program had improved employees’ health or reduced the city’s skyrocketing health care costs, Ferguson said then.
If the program was renewed, Ferguson advised the city to establish a “performance measurement framework” to ensure the contractor is delivering results. Without it, the city can’t make “evidencebased, cost- benefit decisions about the future” of the program.