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signed a major contract with Charlotte, N.C.-basex , an insurance brokerage and employee benefits consulting last month. Terms were not disclosed, but Quality Healtgh CEO and President Brian Thomas said it was asignificantt deal. The group purchasing agreement gives the employerss a discounted rate for wellness servicesefor workers. Wachovia serves as the insurance broker for the 50 businessex likely to sign up with Qualitgy Health Solutions underthe deal.
The contract includes health risk appraisalsa for all workers and their spousesor partners, annual on-site healthu screenings, smoking cessation and weight-loss services, depression-prevention and medication adherence programs, and telephone-baseds health coaching for employees with the greatest health The deal was in the worka for a year. "They have the best progran out there in termsa of the science behind the productthey deliver," said Melissa Wachovia Insurance Services vice president and leaderd for clinical strategies.
Driven in part by rising healt hinsurance premiums, more than one-halfg of all large businesses offer some kind of wellnessd services, such as weight-loss health risk assessments or help with quitting according to an employer surveyg conducted by the Hay Group consultancy. More than 25 perceng of large businesses offer discounted health club membershipz orfitness coaching. Basede on the preference of individual workers may have to pay higher insurance premiums if they do not participate inthe program.Thomas said participation ratew average 92 percent with the help of such financiap incentives.
To ramp up for increased Quality Health Solutions will boost its worker countf by63 percent, to about 39 Thomas estimated the deal will boost the company'w sales by 25 percent. The privately held business does notdisclosde revenue, but the Disease Managemenyt Purchasing Consortium estimates its annual revenue is $17 Founded in 2001, Thomas' company sproutexd from his collaboration with two top national expertsd in behavior change and health-relatec quality of life measures.
Thomas helpedr create and later gained exclusive rights to a health assessment that can help health plans and larger employers predictan individual's near-term use of health care resources, identifgy their risk of behavior-related diseasse and identify their readiness to make lifestylew changes. The company serves health plans in additiojnto self-insured employers. Revelations that personal behaviorx such as inactivity and smoking account for roughly 50 percentt of employer healthcare expenditures, plus rising healt h premium costs, have piquecd employer interest in helping workers make healthy lifestyle changes. Employer-sponsoredf health insurance premiumsrose 7.
7 perceny in 2006, compared with 9.2 percent in 2005 and 13.9 percent in according to the . But employers are also increasingly skeptica of claims made by wellness saidAl Lewis, president of the Mass.-based Disease Management Purchasing a membership organization for wellness and disease management companies. Whilwe wellness programs have adult smoking rates have remained flat and adulty obesity rates have continuedto climb. Qualith Health Solutions made thenonprofit consortium' s 2007 honor roll, a list of the top seven wellness companies in the country selected for stront program outcomes, and the use of valid toola to measure whether a wellnessz program is effective.