ANN ARBOR— People with high health risks such as smoking, obesity and illness cost employers billions of dollars annually in the form of absenteeism, short-term disability and workers’ compensation, according to the University of Michigan Health Management Research Center. A HMRC study published in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine confirms that high-risk individuals take more time off from work, adding lost productivity to their already higher share of health care costs. “We believe this is the first study to evaluate the combined costs of scattered hours of absence, short-term disability and workers’ compensation into a single measure of total time away from work (TAW) cost,” said Douglas Wright, HMRC research associate and the study’s author. Wright examined the relationships between health risks, health status and time away from work costs of 6,220 employees of Steelcase Inc., a manufacturing company based in Grand Rapids, Mich. The study participants were hourly workers who had been employed at Steelcase during the three-year period of 1998-2000. The participants’ health status was determined on the basis of their answers to a Health Risk Appraisal (HRA), a questionnaire Steelcase offers its employees on an annual basis. “We selected 15 HRA items to measure health status,” Wright said. “Some of the lifestyle/ biological risk factors were smoking, low physical activity, high alcohol use, and medical problems such as high blood pressure, heart disease and diabetes. We also looked at psychological risk factors including fair or poor perception of physical health, low job satisfaction and dissatisfaction with personal life. “Higher TAW costs were associated with illness days, drug/medication use which affects mood, physical inactivity, high stress, lower perception of physical health, job dissatisfaction and life dissatisfaction.” Among 6,220 employees in the study, 1,571 (25 percent) took at least one HRA. Of these, 671 individuals reported 0-2 risks and were categorized as low risk; 504 workers with 3-4 risks were medium risk, and the 396 reporting five or more risks were categorized as high-risk, based on the 15 risks measured. “Over 80 percent of the 396 high-risk individuals had a TAW occurrence, costing a mean of $1,764, compared with 61 percent of the low-risk individuals, whose mean cost was $1,096,” Wright said. “If you look at the total TAW costs, 36 percent are attributable to the excess risks of medium- and high-risk individuals or non-HRA participants compared to low-risk participants. The top 10 percent of the employees account for 65 percent of the TAW costs at Steelcase.” Calculating losses due to TAW, Wright estimated the cost of “excess health risks” for Steelcase to be $1.7 million for the three-year period.
For further information, contact Douglas Wright, U-M Health Management Research Center, (734) 764-3558 or wrightdw@umich.edu.