Companies See Benefits from Investing in Health

This story appears in the Nov. 15 print edition of Transport Topics.

BALTIMORE — Improving employees’ health can pay off for trucking companies whose unique issues include a lack of exercise and smoking, experts said.

Calvin Wilhide, director of program development and research for Nationwide Better Health, Hunt Valley, Md., said the insurer devised a program for an auto parts maker that produced return on investment, or ROI, of nearly $5 for every $1 spent.

Speaking at the International Conference on Commercial Driver Health and Wellness here, Wilhide compared spending on health care for workers with heart disease, diabetes and hypertension before and after enrollment in a wellness program.

Among the savings was a 37% cut in hospital admissions.

The wellness program included follow-ups to ensure that participating workers were taking steps such as visiting doctors, exercising and following dietary recommendations.

“The concept of addressing driver health and wellness is long overdue,” said Anne Ferro, administrator of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.

“The discussion has to happen based on commercial ROI,” she said. “When there is an ROI, folks pay attention.”

For full success, the key to the wellness plan, Wilhide said, was whether workers were willing to make changes to improve their own health.

“If you are not going to change, then we are not going to waste time until you are ready to do so,” he said.

Sperian Protection USA Inc., Smithfield, R.I., achieved a return on investment of more than $3 per $1 spent by offering incentives and mandatory program participation, said Michael Vittoria, vice president of human resources.

“This program is very replicable across any type of industry,” he said, comparing Sperian to trucking because about 80% of its workers aren’t in an office. “The first thing you have to do is to get people engaged.”

What Sperian did that was different, he said, was to create that engagement by making the health plan itself the incentive.

At first, Sperian conducted a voluntary personal health risk assessment program to measure factors such as blood pressure. Just 20% of employees participated.

Sperian then decided to require that all employees take those health risk assessments in order to get coverage.

John Bunewith, director of human resources for Lily Transportation Corp., Needham, Mass. told Transport Topics “it was interesting to hear what other people are doing because we embarked on a path to wellness last year.”

The result, he said, was the lowest cost increase in many years at the company, which has 500 drivers.

“I am happy to learn that the path we have embarked on is consistent with others,” Bunewith said. “I am not a big fan of strong-arming employees. Perhaps we can find ways to be more persuasive.”

In her comments, FMCSA’s Ferro reeled off several statistics, including the fact that just 10% of drivers exercise, compared with 60% of the population, and 54% smoke, compared with 21% of all Americans.

Ferro dramatized the difficulty truckers face in trying to be healthy by saying that “walking 100 times around your truck is a very tough way to get half a mile walk.”

Two drivers speaking during the conference — Ralph Garcia of ABF Freight System and Frank Silio of Covenant Transportation — discussed the importance of exercise and weight loss.

“A lot of drivers used to make fun of me,” said Garcia, a competitive powerlifter. “Now they are starting to do [exercise].”

Silio said he chose to lose weight after tying his shoes left him out of breath.

He found ways to eat better on the road, buying a small refrigerator and later, a grill and a rice cooker.

He also used some inventiveness.

Instead of eating at a truck stop, he exercised by walking two miles to a restaurant that served healthy food and then two miles back to his truck.

Erin Mabry, senior research associate for Virginia Polytechnic Institute’s transportation program, surveyed drivers’ reactions to sleep apnea and wellness programs.

While noting that most drivers were satisfied overall with health programs, she said they stressed the difficulty in getting exercise and eating healthy meals while working.

For sleep apnea programs, drivers wanted better interaction with doctors, more treatment options and practical steps such as ways to get their breathing masks repaired quickly.

Cathy Murphy, a vice president for Blue Shield of California, took different approach to illustrating cost, noting that General Motors spends more on health care than steel when it makes a car.

She also stressed a different approach to anti-smoking programs, by telling employees how much it hurt their day-to-day lifestyle instead of saying that they could get lung cancer in 50 years.