IBI/Conference Board Health and Productivity Forum
Now a Virtual Event to be hosted September 14-18, 2020
Topics to be Covered Include:
Resilience at Work: Creating a Psychologically Healthy Workplace
At a time when stress and employee burnout are at an all-time high, employers are hungry for programs and solutions that help build a culture of wellbeing and ensure the health of employees and their businesses. In this session, Kaiser Permanente and R3 Continuum will provide a brief overview of the characteristics of a psychologically healthy workplace, elements to assess your workplace, and practical ways to overcome challenges to increase employee well-being, crisis hardiness, and business productivity.
Nicole Stelter, PhD, LMFT, EAS-C, CCTP, Mental Health Customer Engagement Leader, Kaiser Permanente
Jeff Gorter, MSW, LMSW, Vice President, Crisis Response Clinical Service, R3 Continuum
Fitness for Duty: Harley Davidson’s Successful Process and How You Can Adopt a Program that Works
Employers are often faced with the challenge of determining whether an employee returning from a leave of absence under FMLA or who requests accommodation(s) under the Americans with Disabilities Act is fit for duty. In this session Gail Cohen with Matrix Absence Management, and Jeff Nowak, partner with Littler Mendelson and author of the FMLA Insights Blog, will give a summary of the legal framework of fitness for duty exams under FMLA and the ADA, including some engaging case examples to illustrate employers who got it right and lessons learned from those that did not. We will also provide recommendations on best practices for employers to consider adopting to ensure they are in compliance with the law when conducting fitness for duty exams in their workplace.
Gail I. Cohen, JD, Director, Employment Law & Compliance, Matrix Absence Management, Inc.
Beth Mzronsky, Director of Workplace Environment, Harley Davidson
Jeff Nowak, Esq., Shareholder, Littler Mendelson P.C.
Cost Effectiveness of Biosimilars and Site of Care Issues
The objective of the session is to address how our health plans are working for and some instances against enrollees' efforts to become better health care consumers. How can plan designs accomplish better co-pays, deductibles, and co-insurance in the biosimilar arena? How do unit costs, prescription drugs, and other factors focus on the total cost of care and resulting outcomes? How do biosimilars fit into the equation? Mike Jansen, Walmart will summarize measures, implementation and outcomes from the Employers view.
Eileen Pincay, Segal Group
Annette Guarisco, CEO, ERIC
Wayne Winegarden, Ph.D., Director of the Center for Medical Economics and Innovation, PRI, Principal of Capitol Economic Advisors
How to Put the Affordability Puzzle Together
The unprecedented experience felt by companies and their employees around the globe due to COVID- 19 has tremendous impact on the financial wellbeing of employees and has generated a heightened focus on the true meaning of affordability. Affordability concerns exist across all employees and their families, not just with hourly workforces, and can adversely impact physical, emotional, social and financial aspects of wellbeing. Willis Towers Watson experts will facilitate a discussion with benefits leaders of 3 jumbo employers in the Chicago area around strategies and approaches to improving affordability for their employees.
How Mental Health and Substance Use Issues Harm Workplace Health
Cigna will set the stage for mental health and substance use issues and show how they cause impacts to productivity. This discussion will include the state of mental health and substance use in America and provide background on why mental health and substance use is rising, background on opioid crisis, and what has been done to date. An employer will provide insight on some key issues impacting behavioral health.
Ryan Bruce, Director, Vocational Programs, Cigna
Connecting the Dots: How Is Value Assessment Serving Employer Needs?
Like any other business investment, employers rightly expect employer-sponsored health care benefits to deliver value. Discerning the most valuable benefit package is not a simple profit-loss analysis, though, and employers often have little insight into value when making these investments. With health care costs continuing to rise, more attention is being paid to the actual value of healthcare. Existing methods for estimating value are lacking, though. Employers need insights on how coverage policies will impact their own employees and their families and, as a result, how they will impact the performance of their business.
Jennifer Bright, Executive Director, Innovation and Value Initiative
Mohannad Kusti, MD, Regional Medical Director – Pivot Onsite-Innovations & President & Chief Medical Officer Optimal Workplace & Environmental Wellness Corporation
Margaret Rehayem, Director of Initiatives and Programs, National Alliance for Healthcare Purchaser Coalitions
Communicating with People and its Impact on Absenteeism
This session describes how a supportive people-focused process with a foundation in open and regular communication can make a significant difference in the lives of our people and the performance of the organization. A people-focused experience supportive and progressive process for informing, educating and offering support to workers regarding their use of sick time was developed by a large employer with approximately 30,000 healthcare employees, many of them unionized, working in one of the largest regional health systems in Canada.
Dr. Tyler Amell, CMO/CRO, CoreHealth Technologies / Pacific Coast University for Workplace Health Sciences
Dave Keen, Executive Director, Fraser Health
Waqar Mughal, Director, Mughal & Associates Management Consulting Ltd., Sessional Faculty, Pacific Coast University for Workplace Health Sciences
Making the Case for Eliminating Low-value Care while Incentivizing High-Value Care
Self-insured employers are increasingly challenged with providing competitive, yet cost-effective benefits to maximize the health and productivity of their workforce. This includes balancing the costs to the organization with the costs to the member. However, recent studies have demonstrated that cost neutral designs are feasible; in fact, coverage may be enhanced for high-value drugs and services, without raising premiums and deductibles. This cost neutrality is particularly attainable by identifying and decreasing use of low-value care and using the savings to increase spending on high-value care. By furthering these efforts, we may achieve a healthier and more productive workforce.
Beth Bortz, President/CEO, VA Center for Health Innovation
Mark Fendrick, MD, Director, University of MI Center for Value-Based Insurance Design
Carole Mendoza, Director, Global Health Benefits and Well-being, IBM
Go Where the Money Is: Can We Make Health Care Costs Sustainable for Employers?
This panel will debate different perspectives of what is contributing to the rising costs of health care and how the US can make health care costs sustainable for employers. The panelists will discuss broader indirect costs of health – particularly as they pertain to employers – such as the impact of lost worktime and reduced performance at work among members.
Beth Beaudin-Seiler, PhD , Senior Analyst/ Manager, Altarum’s Center for Value in Health Care/ Research Consortium for Health Care Value Assessment
Paul Fronstin, PhD, Director, Health Research and Education Programs, Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI)
Bruce C. Stuart, PhD, Professor Emeritus, Department of Pharmaceutical Health Services Research, University of Maryland School of Pharmacy,
Ge Bai, PhD, CPA, Johns Hopkins, Associate Professor of Practice
Embracing Accommodations to Drive Productivity and Compliance
This case study will examine how Woodward Inc, an independent designer, manufacturer, and service provider of energy control and optimization solutions for aerospace and industrial markets with over 9600 employees, improved productivity and compliance through a formal accommodations program. Presenters will share learnings and outcomes from the 18-month pilot, including initial results from the implementation of the program across the organization, adjustments made for COVID-19 impacts and future program considerations. Outcomes that will be discussed include: improvements in creating a culture of accommodations support, decreases in leave durations, reductions in intermittent leaves, improvements in consistent oversight of accommodations and increases in accommodations options beyond leave as an accommodation.
Annie Eynard, Disability and Productivity Consultant, The Standard
Kristin Williams, Director, Human Resources, Woodward Inc.
How Boeing Uses Technology and Human Connection to Individualize Cmployee Care
Forum attendees will learn how, after 12 weeks, Boeing employees and their dependents in a cognitive behavioral therapy program show an average reduction of 44.5% in depression scores and a 45.5% average reduction in anxiety scores. Overweight and obese groups are on track for -2.5% and -3.2% weight loss respectively. After 8 weeks, users show reduction of 4.04 mmHg in average weekly systolic blood pressure, and a significant reduction of 4.03 mmHg in average diastolic blood pressure. Finally, the panel will discuss the improved productivity seen through these improved outcomes in lifestyle, chronic, and mental health programs.
Jason Parrott, Global Healthcare & Well Being Strategy, Boeing
Chris Mosunic, Chief Clinical Officer, Vida Health
Impacts of COVID-19 on Patient-Facing Employers
COVID-19 has had an impact on all employers, but those in patient-facing facilities face unique challenges to their workplace. In addition to testing supply, PPE and hospital capacity threats, employers are faced with the challenge of supporting their staff personally and professionally during the pandemic while maintaining adequate staffing levels on-site. Forum participants will hear how the employer is leveraging job-sharing and cross-training to support demand, technology and telemedicine to help mitigate exposure to the virus and limit absence, and how the employer is maintaining productivity and supporting the well-being of its employees during the pandemic.
Frank Alvarez, Principal, Jackson Lewis
Kimberly Mashburn, National Accounts Practice Lead, The Hartford
Dr. Adam Seidner, Medical Director, The Hartford
The impact of Health Activation on Business Performance
This session will highlight the advantages of using employers’ existing key performance indicators (KPIs) when making a business case for health and productivity. We focus on the impact of employee health engagement on operational outcomes identified as important to businesses as an example. Forum attendees will learn that health engagement has a robust, positive association with business performance. They will also gain insights from firsthand, practical efforts to identify and measure senior business leaders’ KPIs, and how to use their own leaders’ KPIs to demonstrate how their health benefit strategy impacts the achievement of business goals.
Craig Kurtzweil, National Vice President, Data Analytics and Innovation, UnitedHealthcare
Erin Peterson, Researcher, IBI
Lauren Piacentini, Advanced Analytics Scientist, UnitedHealthcare
Addressing Mental Health to Reduce Disability Leave and Improve Productivity
This session will feature HR representatives from large employers in conversation with Sun Life’s behavioral health expert and associate director of clinical and health services, Tina Tirabassi. An HR benefits director from Cosmopolitan Resort and Casino, will share why addressing behavioral health concerns in the workplace is a valuable approach for employers, and how they realized that supporting employees during behavioral health issues is just as important as support for a physical injury or illness.
Tina Tirabassi, HR Benefits Director, Cosmopolitan Resort and Casino