BIZHealth: Health Beyond Fitness

Bahram Akradi, CEO Life Time – The Healthy Way of Life Company and myHealthCheck™

Photo Credit: Emily J. Davis

There have been lots of solutions recommended to combat the rising costs of health care while still ensuring that people get the care they need. While politicians wrestle at the Capitol, employers feel the squeeze of rising premiums and employees clench their teeth as they pay more out of pocket. 

There have been lots of solutions recommended to combat the rising costs of health care while still ensuring that people get the care they need. While politicians wrestle at the Capitol, employers feel the squeeze of rising premiums and employees clench their teeth as they pay more out of pocket.

Private enterprise hasn’t sat idly by while hoping for an answer. They are working with their insurance agents to negotiate competitive benefits and incorporate wellness and health management programs into the daily fabric of the workplace. As a result of these efforts, there has been a trend of reduced costs and improved employee health over the last few years.

But one entrepreneur believes that the results aren’t fast or comprehensive enough. According to Bahram Akradi, CEO and Founder of Life Time Fitness in Chanhassen, Minn., the health care industry should focus on the measurable and quantifiable health of employees to determine their cost of health benefits, rather than giving points to companies for simply having a wellness program.

“I personally believe that we will solve the health care issue if we assign the personal responsibility to the insured,” says Akradi. “What if everyone had a health score for getting a good insurance benefit similar to a credit score for getting a loan?”

After years of experience in the fitness industry, Akradi has seen health solutions come and go. “Some of the traditional measures of health, such as the Body Mass Index, are not enough to truly measure health,” he says.

In fact, doctors look at several measures of health. Those measures tell whether or not an individual has a low or high risk for health problems. Akradi hired several doctors and medical professionals to assist in creating a composite rating based on six key measures that can be controlled through healthy lifestyle changes:

» Blood pressure» Body fat percentage

» LDL/HDL» Glucose

» Triglycerides

» Nicotine use

The result was myHealthScore—an individual score of health that is now part of a service to employers and employees called myHealthCheck™. Depending on an employee’s composite score, an employer can determine incentives and rewards for the employee that ultimately result in reduced health care costs.“People get the motivation, support and ability to improve their score and are rewarded for it physically and financially,” Akradi says.

Currently, legislation is allowing companies to charge different premium rates to individual employees. By 2014, there can be a 30-to-50 percent variance between what individual employees pay, based on terms in the federal 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

In October 2011, a survey of more than 300 employers by the National Business Group on Health and Towers Watson found that financial rewards and penalties were increasingly used in health management programs. About 80 percent of the companies surveyed said that they planned to use financial rewards in 2012 and nearly 40 percent said they planned to use penalties for employees making negative health decisions, such as smoking.

Akradi said that employers with 200 or more employees benefit the most from his myHealthCheck™ program, as do companies that are self-insured rather than using a third-party health insurance carrier to provide benefits.

Although pooled benefits may dilute personal responsibility and incentive, the increased out-of-pocket expenses through high-deductible plans have provided a wake-up call for many employees in smaller organizations. People will pay one way or another for unhealthy choices and a continued search for solutions in the public and private sectors can’t hurt.